"Since when is the foreman helping out the boss if he would go and spend a couple hours for his lunch, making a hog out of himself, Sternsilver?"
"I ain't making a hog out of myself, Mr. Seiden," Philip continued. "If I am going out of the factory for my lunch, Mr. Seiden, I got my reasons for it."
Seiden glared at his foreman for some minutes; ordinarily Sternsilver's manner was diffident to the point of timidity, and this newborn courage temporarily silenced Mr. Seiden.
"The way you are talking, Sternsilver," he said at last, "to hear you go on any one would think you are the boss and I am the foreman."
"In business, yes," Philip rejoined, "you are the boss, Mr. Seiden; but outside of business a man could be a Mensch as well as a foreman. Ain't it?"
Seiden stared at the unruffled Sternsilver, who allowed no opportunity for a retort by immediately going on with his dissertation.
"Even operators also," he said. "Hillel Fatkin is an operator, y'understand, but he has got anyhow a couple hundred dollars in the savings bank; and when it comes to family, Mr. Seiden, he's from decent, respectable people in the old country. His own grandfather was a rabbi, y'understand."
"What the devil's that got to do with me, Sternsilver?" Seiden asked. "I don't know what you are talking about at all."
Sternsilver disregarded the interruption.
"Operator oder foreman, Mr. Seiden, what is the difference when it comes to a poor girl like Miss Bessie Saphir, which, even supposing she is a relation from your wife, she ain't so young no longer? Furthermore, with some faces which a girl got it she could have a heart from gold, y'understand, and what is it? Am I right or wrong, Mr. Seiden?"
Mr. Seiden made no reply. He was blinking at vacancy while his mind reverted to an afternoon call paid uptown by Mrs. Miriam Saphir. As a corollary, Mrs. Seiden had kept him awake half the night, and the burden of her jeremiad was: "What did you ever done for my relations? Tell me that."
"Say, lookyhere, Sternsilver," he said at length, "what are you trying to drive into?"
"I am driving into this, Mr. Seiden," Philip replied: "Miss Bessie Saphir must got to get married some time. Ain't it?"
Seiden nodded.
"Schon gut!" Sternsilver continued. "There's no time like the present."
A forced smile started to appear on Seiden's face, when the door leading to the public hall opened and a bonneted and shawled figure appeared. It was none other than Mrs. Miriam Saphir.
"Ai, tzuris!" she cried; and sinking into the nearest chair she began forthwith to rock to and fro and to beat her forehead with her clenched fist.
"Nu!" Seiden exploded. "What's the trouble now?"
Mrs. Saphir ceased rocking. On leaving home she had provided herself with a pathetic story which would not only excuse her presence in Seiden's factory but was also calculated to wring at least seventy-five cents from Seiden himself. Unfortunately she had forgotten to go over the minor details of the narrative on her way downtown, and now even the main points escaped her by reason of a heated altercation with the conductor of a Third Avenue car. The matter in dispute was her tender, in lieu of fare, of a Brooklyn transfer ticket which she had found between the pages of a week-old newspaper. For the first ten blocks of her ride she had feigned ignorance of the English language, and five blocks more were consumed in the interpretation, by a well-meaning passenger, of the conductor's urgent demands. Another five blocks passed in Mrs. Saphir's protestations that she had received the transfer in question from the conductor of a Twenty-third Street car; failing the accuracy of which statement, she expressed the hope that her children should all drop dead and that she herself might never stir from her seat. This brought the car to Bleecker Street, where the conductor rang the bell and invited Mrs. Saphir to alight. Her first impulse was to defy him to the point of a constructive assault, with its attendant lawsuit against the railroad company; but she discovered that, in carrying out her project to its successful issue, she had already gone one block past her destination. Hence she walked leisurely down the aisle; and after pausing on the platform to adjust her shawl and bonnet she descended to the street with a parting scowl at the conductor, who immediately broke the bell-rope in starting the car.
"Nu!" Seiden repeated. "Couldn't you open your mouth at all? What's the matter?"
Mrs. Saphir commenced to rock tentatively, but Seiden stopped her with a loud "Koosh!"
"What do you want from me?" he demanded.
"Meine Tochter Bessie," she replied, "she don't get on at all."
"What d'ye mean, she don't get on at all?" Seiden interrupted. "Ain't I doing all I could for her? I am learning her the business; and what is more, Mrs. Saphir, I got a feller which he wants to marry her, too. Ain't that right, Sternsilver?"
Philip nodded vigorously and Mrs. Saphir sat up in her chair.
"Him?" she asked.
"Sure; why not?" Seiden answered.
"But, Mr. Seiden – " Sternsilver cried.
"Koosh, Sternsilver," Seiden said. "Don't you mind that woman at all. If Bessie was my own daughter even, I would give my consent."
"Aber, Mr. Seiden – " Sternsilver cried again in anguished tones, but further protest was choked off by Mrs. Saphir, who rose from her seat with surprising alacrity and seized Philip around the neck. For several minutes she kissed him with loud smacking noises, and by the time he had disengaged himself Seiden had brought in Miss Bessie Saphir. As she blushingly laid her hand in Sternsilver's unresisting clasp Seiden patted them both on the shoulder.
"For a business man, Sternsilver," he said, "long engagements is nix; and to show you that I got a heart, Sternsilver, I myself would pay for the wedding, which would be in two weeks at the latest."
He turned to Mrs. Miriam Saphir.
"I congradulate you," he said. "And now get out of here!"
For the next ten days Mr. and Mrs. Seiden and Miss Saphir were so busy with preparations for the wedding that they had no leisure to observe Sternsilver's behaviour. He proved to be no ardent swain; and, although Bessie was withdrawn from the factory on the day following her betrothal, Sternsilver called at her residence only twice during the first week of their engagement.
"I didn't think the feller got so much sense," Seiden commented when Bessie Saphir complained of Philip's coldness.
"He sees you got your hands full getting ready, so he don't bother you at all."
As for Seiden, he determined to spare no expense, up to two hundred and fifty dollars, in making the wedding festivites greatly redound to his credit both socially and in a business way.
To that end he had dispatched over a hundred invitations to the wholesale houses from which he purchased goods.
"You see what I am doing for you," he said to Sternsilver one morning, a week before the wedding day. "Not only in postage stamps I am spending my money but the printing also costs me a whole lot, too, I bet yer."
"What is the use spending money for printing when you got a typewriter which she is setting half the time doing nothing, Mr. Seiden?" Philip protested.
"That's what I told Mrs. Seiden," his employer replied, "and she goes pretty
