Their house, too, will be like a home to me. Oh, it is so sweet to have friends, real friends."
It was close upon 10 o'clock when I reached the Chaikins' flat in Harlem. I had barely closed the door behind me when I whipped out the check, and, dangling it before Mrs. Chaikin, I said, radiantly: "Good evening. Guess what it is!" "The check you expected from your uncle or cousin or whatever he is to you.
Is it?" she conjectured
"No. It's something far better," I replied. "It's a check from the Western company, and for the full amount, too." And, although I was fairly on the road to atheism, I exclaimed, with a thrill of genuine pity, "Oh, God has been good to us, Mrs. Chaikin!"
I let her see the figures, which she could scarcely make out. Then her husband took a look at the check. He did know something about figures, so he read the sum out aloud
Instead of hailing it with joy, as I had expected her to do, she said to me, glumly: "And how do we know that you did not receive more?"
"But that was the bill," her husband put in
"I am not asking you, am I?" she disciplined him
"But it is the amount on the bill," I said, with a smile
"And how do we know that it is?" she demanded. "It's you who write the bills, and it's you who get the checks. What do we know?"