The meal over and the dishes washed, Mrs. Margolis caused Lucy to bring her school reader and began to read it aloud, Lucy or I correcting her pronunciation where it was faulty. She was frankly parading her intellectual achievements before me, and I could see that she took them quite seriously.
She was very sensitive about the mistakes she made. She accepted our corrections, Lucy's and mine, with great earnestness, often with a gesture of annoyance and mortification at the failure of her memory
When I bade them good night Max said, heartily, in English, "Call again, Levinsky." And he added, in a mixture of English and Yiddish, "Don't be a stranger, even if you are a manufacturer."
"Call again," his wife echoed, affably
"Call again!" shouted Dannie, in his funereal voice
I left with the comfortable feeling of having spent an hour or two in a house where I was sincerely welcome
"It's a good thing to have real friends," I soliloquized in a transport of good spirits, on my way to the Elevated station. "Now I sha'n't feel all alone in the world. There is at least one house where I can call and feel at home."
I beheld Mrs. Margolis's face and her slender figure and I was conscious of a remote desire to see her again
I was in high feather. While the Elevated train was carrying me up-town I visioned an avalanche of new orders for my shop and a spacious factory full of machines and men. I saw myself building up a great business. An ugly thought flashed through my mind: Why be saddled with a partner? Why not get rid of Chaikin? I belittled the part which his samples had played in my successful start, and it seemed to be a cruel injustice to myself to share my fortune with a man who had no more brains than a cat. But I instantly saw the other side of the situation: It was Chaikin's models that had made the Manheimers what they were, and if I clung to him until he could afford to let me announce him as my partner the very news of it would be a tremendous boost for my factory. And then I had a real qualm of compunction for having entertained that thought even for a single moment. My heart warmed to Chaikin and his family. "I shall be faithful to them," I vowed inwardly.
"They have been so good to me. We must be absolutely devoted to each other.