After a slight pause Bernstein could not forbear a remark which he had stubbornly repressed while Jake was challenging him to a debate on the education of baseball players: “Look here, Jake; since fighters and baseball men are all educated, then why don’t you try to become so? Instead of spending your money on fights, dancing, and things like that, would it not be better if you paid it to a teacher?”
Jake flew into a fresh passion. “Never min’ what I do with my money,” he said; “I don’t steal it from you, do I? Rejoice that you keep tormenting your books. Much does he know! Learning, learning, and learning, and still he can not speak English. I don’t learn and yet I speak quicker than you!”
A deep blush of wounded vanity mounted to Bernstein’s sallow cheek. “Ull right, ull right!” he cut the conversation short, and took up the newspaper.
Another nervous silence fell upon the group. Jake felt wretched. He uttered an English oath, which in his heart he directed against himself as much as against his sedate companion, and fell to frowning upon the leg of a machine.
“Vill you go by Joe to-night?” asked Fanny in English, speaking in an undertone. Joe was a dancing master. She was sure Jake intended to call at his “academy” that evening, and she put the question only in order to help him out of his sour mood.
“No,” said Jake, morosely.
“Vy, to-day is Vensday.”
“And without you I don’t know it!” he snarled in Yiddish.
The finisher girl blushed deeply and refrained from any response.
“He does look like a regely Yankee, doesn’t he?” Pessé whispered to her after a little.