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Updated: June 22, 2025
All at once she began to giggle hysterically again, then cried out with a peal of laughter: "Oh, what a way for our picnic to end!" "Now, then, Maria," said Zerkow, his cracked, strained voice just rising above a whisper, hitching his chair closer to the table, "now, then, my girl, let's have it all over again. Tell us about the gold plate the service.
"I wonder," said Trina, as she crossed the yard back of Zerkow's house, "I wonder what rent Zerkow and Maria pay for this place. I'll bet it's cheaper than where Mac and I are." Trina found Maria sitting in front of the kitchen stove, her chin upon her breast. Trina went up to her. She was dead.
They haggled as usual over the price, but to-night Maria was too excited over other matters to spend much time in bickering over a few cents. "Look here, Zerkow," she said as soon as the transfer was made, "I got something to tell you. A little while ago I sold a lottery ticket to a girl at the flat; the drawing was in this evening's papers. How much do you suppose that girl has won?"
"And it rang like bells, didn't it?" prompted Zerkow. "Sweeter'n church bells, and clearer." "Ah, sweeter'n bells. Wasn't that punch-bowl awful heavy?" "All you could do to lift it." "I know. Oh, I know," answered Zerkow, clawing at his lips. "Where did it all go to? Where did it go?" Maria shook her head. "It's gone, anyhow." "Ah, gone, gone! Think of it!
"But there's where Zerkow killed Maria the very house an' you wake up an' squeal in the night just thinking of it." "I know. I know it will be bad at first, but I'll get used to it, an' it's just half again as cheap as where we are now. I was looking at a room; we can have it dirt cheap. It's a back room over the kitchen.
Then, with Maria's refusal to continue the tale, came the reaction. Zerkow awoke as from some ravishing dream. The plate was gone, was irretrievably lost. There was nothing in that miserable room but grimy rags and rust-corroded iron. What torment! what agony! to be so near so near, to see it in one's distorted fancy as plain as in a mirror.
"Take another drink." Maria took another swallow of the whiskey. "Now, go on," repeated Zerkow; "let's have the story." Maria squared her elbows on the deal table, looking straight in front of her with eyes that saw nothing. "Well, it was this way," she began. "It was when I was little.
When the company ate off this service, it must have made a fine noise these gold knives and forks clinking together upon these gold plates. "Now, let's have it all over again, Maria," pleaded Zerkow. "Begin now with 'There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them gold. Go on, begin, begin, begin!" The red-headed Pole was in a fever of excitement.
The back yard of the flat had a gate that opened into a little inclosure where Zerkow kept his decrepit horse and ramshackle wagon, and from thence Trina could enter directly into Maria's kitchen.
When Maria entered his shop, Zerkow had just come in from his daily rounds. His decrepit wagon stood in front of his door like a stranded wreck; the miserable horse, with its lamentable swollen joints, fed greedily upon an armful of spoiled hay in a shed at the back. The interior of the junk shop was dark and damp, and foul with all manner of choking odors.
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