168 SHOLOM-ALECHEM
One heard him late at night drumming it over and over : Nominative dative instrumental vocative ! It grated so on my ears! I could hardly bear it. Eat? Sleep ? Not he ! Taking a poor creature and tormenting it like that, all for nothing, I call it cruelty to animals ! "The child," say I, "will be ill!" "Bite off your tongue," says she. I was nowhere, and he went up a second time to the slaughter, and brought home nothing but fives ! And why not ? I tell you, he has a head there isn't his like ! And such a boy for study as never was, always at it, day and night, and repeating to him- self between whiles! That's all right then, is it? Was it all right ? When it came to the point, and they hung out the names of all the children who were really entered, we looked mine wasn't there! Then there was a screaming and a commotion. What a shame! And nothing but fives ! Now look at her, now see her go, see her run, see her do this and that ! In short, she went and she ran and she did this and that and the other until at last they begged her not to worry them any longer, that is, to tell you the truth, between ourselves, they turned her out, yes! And after they had turned her out, then it was she burst into the house, and showed for the first time, as it were, what she was worth. "Pray," said she, "what sort of a father are you? If you were a good father, an affectionate father, like other fathers, you would have found favor with the director, patronage, recommendations, this that !" Like a woman, wasn't it? It's not enough, apparently, for me to have my head full of terms and seasons and fairs and notes and bills of exchange and "protests" and all
