"The bell don't ring?" Mrs. Kovner exclaimed. "Who says it don't?"
She pressed the button with her finger and a shrill response came from within.
"Who fixed it?" Glaubmann asked.
"Who fixed it?" Mrs. Kovner repeated. "Who do you suppose fixed it? Do you think we got from charity to fix it? Gott sei Dank, we ain't exactly beggars, Mr. Glaubmann. Ourselves we fixed it, Mr. Glaubmann—and the painting and the plumbing also; because if you would got in savings bank what I got it, Mr. Glaubmann, you wouldn't make us so much trouble about paying for a couple hundred dollars' repairs."
"Aber," Glaubmann began, "you shouldn't of done it!"
"I know we shouldn't," Mrs. Kovner replied. "We should of stayed here the rest of the year with the place looking like a pigsty already! Aber don't kick till you got to, Mr. Glaubmann. It would be time enough to say something when we sue you by the court yet that you should pay for the repairs we are making here."
Glaubmann pushed his hat back from his forehead and wiped his streaming brow.
"Nu, Mrs. Kovner," he said at last, "it seems to me we got a misunderstanding all round here. I would like to talk the matter over with you."
With this conciliatory prelude he assumed an easy attitude by crossing his legs and supporting himself with one hand on the freshly painted doorjamb, whereat Mrs. Kovner uttered a horrified shriek, and the rage which three weeks of housepainters' clutter had fomented in her bosom burst forth unchecked.
"Out from here, you dirty loafer you!" she shrieked, and grabbed a calcimining brush from one of the many paintpots that bestrewed the hallway. Glaubmann bounded down the front stoop to the sidewalk just as Mrs. Kovner made a frenzied pass at him with the brush; and consequently, when he entered Kent J. Goldstein's office on Nassau Street an hour later, his black overcoat was speckled like the hide of an axis deer.