“I vould not put on my hat for a dollar and a quarter,” she said.
“It’s all I’ve got,” he pleaded, his voice breaking. “I must get some one—my wife will die. I can’t help it—I—”
Madame Haupt had put back her pork and onions on the stove. She turned to him and answered, out of the steam and noise: “Git me ten dollars cash, und so you can pay me the rest next mont’.”
“I can’t do it—I haven’t got it!” Jurgis protested. “I tell you I have only a dollar and a quarter.”
The woman turned to her work. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “Dot is all to try to sheat me. Vot is de reason a big man like you has got only a dollar und a quarter?”
“I’ve just been in jail,” Jurgis cried—he was ready to get down upon his knees to the woman—“and I had no money before, and my family has almost starved.”
“Vere is your friends, dot ought to help you?”
“They are all poor,” he answered. “They gave me this. I have done everything I can—”
“Haven’t you got notting you can sell?”
“I have nothing, I tell you—I have nothing,” he cried, frantically.