"Please, I want my mamma!"
"Stop your whimpering, you cur!" shouted the enraged Count.
But Jacob's tears would not be checked so abruptly.
"Please don't send me back to the soldiers," he pleaded, in his miserable jargon. "I don't want to go with the soldiers."
At this juncture Loris joined in the cry. "I don't want him. I want a pony to play with."
"Here, Ivan," commanded the excited Count, "take this brat out into the barn, and keep him secure until I ask for him. We will investigate his case after supper. Minka, take Loris to bed at once." Then turning to his wife, who actually trembled before his infuriated glance, he said:
"Louise, you have done some very silly things since I married you, but this is the most absurd. You know my aversion to Jews, and here you bring a dirty Jew out of the streets to become a playmate of our Loris!"
"I could not leave the poor child to die in the road," pouted Louise, who, in addition to being extremely frivolous, was very tender-hearted. "If I had found a sick dog, I should have aided him."
"I would rather it had been a dog than a Jew."
"How could I know it was a Jew?"