He ran to Chashke.
He was terribly pale, and Chashke and her mother were frightened when
he entered.
“What is the matter?” cried Chashke.
He threw himself upon the wooden lounge, lowered his head and was
silent. Both women stared at him.
“Is your tongue paralysed?” asked the old woman, finally breaking the
silence.
“What’s happened over at your place? Speak, man,” entreated Chashke.
“What should happen?” he asked angrily. “It happened! My wife is no
better than the rest! She’d like to run everything. Everything!”
He recounted all that had taken place in his home.
“His wife is a wise woman, upon my word,” offered the old woman after
hearing the story.
But Drabkin was anxious to know what Chashke thought.
“Well, what do you think of the reckoning?” he asked, eyeing her
intently.
“I never studied mathematics——”
He made a gesture of impatience, and she added,—“but I believe that
the figures are correct.”
“And suppose they _are_ correct,—then what?”
He was growing angry.
“What do I know?” replied Chashke, coldly. “If they are correct, then
from the looks of things, matters can’t be otherwise.”
“What do you mean,—‘can’t be otherwise?’ Am I, then, to do just like
all the other bosses?”
“Who’s telling you to become a boss?”
He looked at her in astonishment.
“Well, what are you staring at? Keep on working as you’ve done up to
now. Don’t take it into your head to run a factory....”
“There’s talk for you!”
“Certainly!”
Seething with fury, he left Chashke.
Such ideas she could take into her head!