Every Soul Hath Its Song | Page 6

ma."
"You shut up, Izzy!"
"Ach, Ray, I--"
"Give me the dollar, pa, for voting against Europe. Don't let her
hypnotize you like she always does. Down with Europe! I say. We
should cross the ocean and get our feet wet, eh, pa?"
He waggled a pinch of her flushed cheek between his thumb and
forefinger and dived into his pocket.
"Baby-la, you!" he said, crossing her palm; and she was out and past
him, imprinting a kiss on the crest of the bald horseshoe and tossing a
glance as quick as Pierrette's over one shoulder.
On the echo of the slamming door, her eyes shining with conviction
and her face suddenly old with prophecy, Miriam turned upon her

mother.
"You see, mamma, you see! Seventeen, and nothing in her head but
Brighton Beach and soda-water fountains and joy-riding. Just you
watch; some day she'll meet up with some dinky fakir or ribbon clerk at
one of those places, and the first thing you know for a son-in-law you'll
have a crook."
"Miriam!"
"Yes, you will! Those are the only chances a girl gets if she's not in the
swim."
"Listen to her, ma, and then you blame me for not bringing any of the
fellows round here for her to meet. You don't catch me doing it, the
way she thinks she's better than they are and gives them the high hand.
Not muchy!"
"I should worry for the kind you bring, Izzy."
"As nice boys Izzy has brought home, Miriam, as ever in my life I
would want to meet."
"Yes, but you see for yourself the way the society fellows, like Sol
Blumenthal and Laz Herzog, hang round the Lillianthal girls. I always
got to take a back seat, and maybe you think I don't know it."
"I never heard that on ships young men was so plentiful."
"She wants to land an Italian count and she'll just about land a barber."
Mr. Binswanger peered suddenly over the rim of his paper. "A
no-count yet is what we need in the family. Get right away such ideas
out your head. All my life I 'ain't worked so hard to spend my money
on the old country. In America I made it and in America I spend it.
Now just stop it, right away, too."
"Go to it, pa!"

Suddenly Miss Binswanger let fall her head into her cupped hands.
Tears trickled through. "I--I just wish that I--I hadn't been born!
Why--did you move up-town, then, where everybody does things,
if--if--"
Her father's reply came in a sudden avalanche. "For why? Because then,
just like now, you nagged me. You can take it from me, just so happy
as now was me and mamma down by Rivington Street. I'm a plain man
and with no time for nonsense. I tell you the shirtwaist business 'ain't
been so good that--"
"You--you can't fool me with that poor talk, papa. Everybody knows
you get a bigger business each year. You can't fool me that way."
Tears burst and flowed over her words, and her head burrowed deeper.
Across her prostrate form Simon Binswanger nodded to his wife in
rising perplexity.
"Fine come-off, eh, Carrie?"
"Miriam, ach, Miriam, come here to mamma."
"Aw, take her, pa, if she's so crazy to go. It'll be slack time between
now and when I get back from my territory. Max has got pretty good
run of the office these days. Take her across, pa, and get it out of her
system. Quit your crying, kid."
Mr. Binswanger waggled a crooked finger in close proximity to his
son's face. "Du! Du mit a big mouth! Is it because you sell for the
house such big bills I can afford to run me all over Europe! A few more
accounts like Einstein from Cleveland you can sell for me, and then we
can go bankrupt easier as to Europe. Du mit a big mouth!"
"Pa, ain't you ever going to get that out of your system? My first bad
account and--"
"You'm a dude! That's all I know, you'm a dude! Right on my back
now I got on your old shirts and dressed like a king I feel."

"I'm done, pa! I'm done!"
"Ach, Miriam, don't cry so. Here, look up at mamma. Maybe, Miriam,
if you ask your papa once more he will--"
"I tell you, no. What Mark Lillianthal does and what my son can say so
easy makes nothing with me. I'm glad as I got a home to stay in."
Above her daughter's bowed head Mrs. Binswanger regarded her
husband through watery eyes. "She ain't so wrong, Simon. I tell you I
got the first time to hear you come out and say to your family, 'Well,
this year we do something big.' The