"Don't know and don't keer!" she said. "Where was you hidin' at, when the
fight was goin' on?"
"Getting my lessons. Did the cop pinch the Clarke guy?"
"You betcher," said Nance. "You orter seen the way he took on! Begged to
beat the band. Me and Danny never. Me and him--"
A volley of curses came from the hall below, the sound of a blow,
followed by a woman's faint scream of protest, then a door slammed.
"If I was Mis' Smelts," said Nance darkly, with a look that was too old
for ten years, "I wouldn't stand for that. I wouldn't let no man hit me.
I'd get him sent up. I--"
"You walk yourself up them steps, Nance Molloy!" commanded Mrs. Snawdor's
rasping voice from the floor above. "I ain't got no time to be waitin'
while you gas with Ike Lavinsky."
Nance, thus admonished, obeyed orders, arriving on the domestic hearth in
time to prevent the soup from boiling over. Mr. Snawdor, wearing a long
apron and an expression of tragic doom, was trying to set the table,
while over and above and beneath him surged his turbulent offspring. In a
broken rocking-chair, fanning herself with a box-top, sat Mrs. Snawdor,
indulging herself in a continuous stream of conversation and apparently
undisturbed by the uproar around her. Mrs. Snawdor was not sensitive to
discord. As a necessary adjustment to their environment, her nerves had
become soundproof.
"You certainly missed it by not being here!" she was saying to Mr.
Snawdor. "It was one of the liveliest mix-ups ever I seen! One of them
rich boys bust the cathedral window.
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