“Pas si bête,” returned the child. “Not I. Think I want to cool my heels in the little saint? I was goin’ to fetch it in the mornin’; but you take the curlyhead back his sacred. I don’t want it. It danced out of his pocket. Some day,” coolly, “I’ll pick him. He’s a——I’d like to see his grape jam running,” with an oath and sudden darkening of face. Stargarde was familiar with some of the slang of recidivists collected together in large cities, but she had never before the advent of Zeb’s parents heard it in the small city of Halifax. With a sensation of poignant and intense grief she looked at the child who, whether it was due to her environment or not, was talking more of it this evening than she had ever heard from her before.
“Curlyhead,” Stargarde knew, meant Jew; “little saint,” prison; “sacred,” purse; and “grape jam” was blood. Oh, to get the child away from here, from the choking, stifling atmosphere of poverty and vice that was ruining her!
Zeb, as if aware of her distress, had curled herself up sullenly among the rags, and Stargarde rose to her feet and turned to speak to her mother.
In a corner of the room she found an extraordinary scene being enacted. Unknown to her, while she bent over Zeb, the younger of the two men had managed to stagger quietly from his seat and stand behind her, divided between an admiration for her magnificent physique, such a contrast to his own puny strength, and an endeavor to keep on his tottering legs.
The gravely watchful dog that had walked into the room behind his mistress, and lay curled on the floor beside her, saw nothing hostile in the man’s attitude, and beyond keeping an observing eye upon him took no measures to make him retreat.
Not so sensible was the woman behind the door. For some reason or other she was highly displeased with the proceeding of the young man. Springing upon him as silently and as stealthily as a wild beast of the cat tribe would have done, she hissed in his ear, “Not for you to look at, Camaro; back! back!” and she motioned him to his seat.
He had reached the obstinate stage of drunkenness, and though a little fear of her shone out of his black and beady eyes, he shrugged his shoulders carelessly, and said in Italian, “Presently, presently, my lady.”
“Not presently, but now,” said the woman in pure and correct English, and having taken enough of the fiery liquor to be thoroughly quarrelsome, she threw herself upon him, dragged him to a corner where, when Stargarde turned around, she was quietly and persistently beating him with a stick of wood that she had caught from beside the stove.
Her husband sat stupidly watching her from the table, his hand going more and more frequently to the jug; and her victim, making not the slightest effort to withstand her, lay taking his beating as a submissive child might resign itself to deserved punishment from a parent.
“Stop, stop!” exclaimed Stargarde, hurrying to her side. “That’s enough, Zeb’s mother”—and throwing her cloak back over her shoulders she laid her hand on the woman’s club.