Page:The Voice of the City (1908).djvu/62

 “No man would kick a woman,” said Peters, virtuously. “A little choking—just a touch on the windpipe—that gets away with ’em—and no marks left. Wait for me. I’ll bring back that dollar, boys.”

High up in a tenement-house between Second Avenue and the river lived the Peterses in a back room so gloomy that the landlord blushed to take the rent for it. Mrs. Peters worked at sundry times, doing odd jobs of scrubbing and washing. Mr. Peters had a pure, unbroken record of five years without having earned a penny. And yet they clung together, sharing each other’s hatred and misery, being creatures of habit. Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.

Mrs. Peters reposed her 200 pounds on the safer of the two chairs and gazed stolidly out the one window at the brick wall opposite. Her eyes were red and damp. The furniture could have been carried away on a pushcart, but no pushcart man would have removed it as a gift.

The door opened to admit Mr. Peters. His fox-terrier eyes expressed a wish. His wife’s diagnosis located correctly the seat of it, but misread it hunger instead of thirst.

“You’ll get nothing more to eat till night,” she said, looking out of the window again. “Take your hound-dog’s face out of the room.”