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This was child's play for him, and he got a dollar and seventy-five cents a day for it; on Saturday he paid Aniele the seventy-five cents a week he owed her for the use of her garret, and also redeemed his overcoat, which Elzbieta had put in pawn when he was in jail. This last was a great blessing.
A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one was staring at him. "What's the matter?" he exclaimed again. And then, up in the garret, he heard sounds of wailing, in Marija's voice. He started for the ladder and Aniele seized him by the arm. "No, no!" she exclaimed. "Don't go up there!" "What is it?" he shouted. And the old woman answered him weakly: "It's Antanas. He's dead.
They spent all their time thinking about it, and what they were going to put into it. As their week with Aniele was up in three days, they lost no time in getting ready. They had to make some shift to furnish it, and every instant of their leisure was given to discussing this.
Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand; his head sank and his arms shook it looked as if he were going to collapse. Then suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him, fumbling in her skirt pocket. She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner of which she had something tied. "Here, Jurgis!" she said, "I have some money. Palauk! See!"
Then there were more outcries and threatening, until at last Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs disappearing through the trap door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt started to walk. Then suddenly Aniele came to him and took him by the arm. "Now," she said, "you go away. Do as I tell you you have done all you can, and you are only in the way. Go away and stay away."
At last Aniele succeeded in pacifying her, and she essayed the ascent; then, however, she had to be stopped while the old woman cautioned her about the floor of the garret.
Yet, when they saw the home of the Widow Jukniene they could not but recoil, even so, in all their journey they had seen nothing so bad as this. Poni Aniele had a four-room flat in one of that wilderness of two-story frame tenements that lie "back of the yards."
"Not very long," Marija answered, and then, at a signal from Aniele, she rushed on: "You go away, Jurgis you can't help go away and come back later. It's all right it's " "Who's with her?" Jurgis demanded; and then, seeing Marija hesitating, he cried again, "Who's with her?" "She's she's all right," she answered. "Elzbieta's with her." "But the doctor!" he panted. "Some one who knows!"
It was not a question of life and death for him, therefore; he might hunt all day, and come again on the morrow, and try hanging on thus for weeks, like hundreds and thousands of others. Meantime, Teta Elzbieta would go and beg, over in the Hyde Park district, and the children would bring home enough to pacify Aniele, and keep them all alive.
All day long the children of Aniele were raking in the dump for food for these chickens; and sometimes, when the competition there was too fierce, you might see them on Halsted Street walking close to the gutters, and with their mother following to see that no one robbed them of their finds. Money could not tell the value of these chickens to old Mrs.
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