“Nice pleasure, anyhull,” remarked the widow. “Never min’, we shall see how it will lie in his head when he has a wife and children to support.”
Jake colored. “What does a chicken know about these things?” he said irascibly.
Bernstein again could not help intervening. “And you, Jake, can not do without ‘these things,’ can you? Indeed, I do not see how you manage to live without them.”
“Don’t you like it? I do,” Jake declared tartly. “Once I live in America,” he pursued, on the defensive, “I want to know that I live in America. Dot’sh a’ kin’ a man I am! One must not be a greenhorn. Here a Jew is as good as a Gentile. How, then, would you have it? The way it is in Russia, where a Jew is afraid to stand within four ells of a Christian?”
“Are there no other Christians than fighters in America?” Bernstein objected with an amused smile. “Why don’t you look for the educated ones?”
“Do you mean to say the fighters are not ejecate? Better than you, anyhoy,” Jake said with a Yankee wink, followed by his Semitic smile. “Here you read the papers, and yet I’ll betch you you don’t know that Corbett findished college.”
“I never read about fighters,” Bernstein replied with a bored gesture, and turned to his paper.
“Then say that you don’t know, and dot’sh ull!”
Bernstein made no reply. In his heart Jake respected him, and was now anxious to vindicate his tastes in the judgment of his scholarly shopmate and in his own.
“Alla right, let it be as you say; the fighters are not ejecate. No, not a bit!” he said ironically, continuing to address himself to Bernstein. “But what will you say to baseball? All college boys and tony peoplesh play it,” he concluded triumphantly. Bernstein remained silent, his eyes riveted to his newspaper. “Ah, you don’t answer, shee?” said Jake, feeling put out.