The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann Volume I Part 96

LEONTINE

I've just got as thin as can be, mama! My clothes is just hangin' on to me.

MRS. WOLFF

You hurry now and go in to bed or papa'll raise a row yet. He ain't got no understandin' for things like that.

ADELAIDE

Papa always speaks so uneducated!

MRS. WOLFF

Well, he didn't learn to have no education. An' that'd be just the same thing with you if I hadn't brought you up to be educated. [_Holding a saucepan over the oven: to LEONTINE:_] Come now, put it in! [_LEONTINE places the pieces of washed venison into the sauce-pan._] So, now go to bed.

LEONTINE

[_Goes into the next room. While she is still visible, she says:_] Oh, mama, Motes has moved away from Krueger.

MRS. WOLFF

I guess he didn't pay no rent.

LEONTINE

It was just like pullin' a tooth every time, Mr. Krueger says, but he paid. Anyhow, he says, he had to kick him out. He's such a lyin'

loudmouthed fellow, and always so high and mighty toward Mr. Krueger.

MRS. WOLFF

If I had been in Mr. Krueger's place I wouldn't ha' kept him that long.

LEONTINE

Because Mr. Krueger used to be a carpenter onct, that's why Motes always acts so contemptuous. And then, too, he quarrelled with Dr. Fleischer.

MRS. WOLFF

Well, anybody that'll quarrel with _him_...! I ain't sayin' anythin', but them people wouldn't harm a fly!

LEONTINE

They won't let him come to the Fleischers no more.

MRS. WOLFF

If you could get a chanct to work for them people some day!

LEONTINE

They treat the girls like they was their own children.

MRS. WOLFF

And his brother in Berlin, he's cas.h.i.+er in a theatre.

WULKOW

[_Has knocked at the door repeatedly and now calls out in a hoa.r.s.e voice._] Ain't you goin' to have the kindness to let me in.

MRS. WOLFF

Well, I should say! Why not! Walk right in!

WULKOW

[_Comes in. He is a lighterman on the Spree river, near sixty years old, bent, with a greyish-yellow beard that frames his head from ear to ear but leaves his weather-beaten face free._] I wish you a very good evenin'.

MRS. WOLFF

Look at him comin' along again to take in a woman a little bit.

WULKOW

I've give up tryin' that this long while!

MRS. WOLFF

Maybe, but that's the way it's goin' to be anyhow.

WULKOW

T'other way roun', you mean.

MRS. WOLFF

What'll it be next?--Here it's hangin'! A grand feller, eh?

WULKOW

I tell you, Julius ought to be lookin' out sharp. They's gettin' to be pretty keen again.

MRS. WOLFF

What are you goin' to give us for it, that's the main thing. What's the use o' jabberin'?

WULKOW