"You don't need to listen, Izzy Binswanger. I wasn't talking to you,
anyways."

"No, to your mother you was talking--always to me. I got to hear it."

A sudden vibration darted through Mrs. Binswanger's body, straightening
it. "Always me! I tell you, Simon, with your family you 'ain't got no
troubles. I got 'em all. How he sits there behind his newspaper just
like a boarder and not in the family! I tell you more as once in my life
I have wished there was never a newspaper printed. Right under his nose
he sits with one glued every evening."

"Na, na, old lady!"

"That sweet talk don't make no neverminds with me. 'Na, na,' he says. I
tell you even when my children was babies how they could cry every night
right under his nose and never a hand would that man raise to help me.
I tell you my husband's a grand help to me. 'Such a grand husband,' the
ladies always say to me I got. I wish they should know what I know!"

Mr. Binswanger tossed aside his newspaper and raised his spectacles to
his horseshoe expanse of bald head. His face radiated into a smile
that brought out the whole chirography of fine lines, and his eyes
disappeared in laughter like two raisins poked into dough.

"Na, na, old lady, na, na!" He made to pinch her cheek where it bagged
toward a soft scallop of double chin, but she withdrew querulously.

"I tell you what I been through this winter, with Izzy out in a Middle