Moisheh’s hand leaped to the watch in his vest pocket. “My gold watch! My prize from the night school?” he pleaded. “It ain’t just a watch—it’s given me by the principal for never being absent for a whole year.”
“Oh, rot!—you, with your sentimentality! Try to understand something once.” The doctor waved his objections aside. “Once I get my start in an uptown office I can buy you a dozen watches. I’m telling you my whole future depends on the front I put up at the landlord’s house, and still you hesitate!”
Moisheh looked at his watch, fingering it. His eyes filled with tears. “Oi weh!” he groaned. “It’s like a piece from my heart. My prize from the night school,” he mumbled, brokenly; “but take it if you got to have it.”
“You’ll get it back,” confidently promised the doctor, “get it back a hundred times over.” And as he slipped the watch into his pocket, Moisheh’s eyes followed it doggedly. “So long, mammeniu; no dinner for me to-day.” Feivel bestowed a hasty good-bye caress upon his old mother.
The doctor was now living in an uptown boarding-house, having moved some weeks before, giving the excuse that for his business it was necessary to cultivate an uptown acquaintance. But he still kept up his office in Rutgers Street.
One morning after he had finished treating my teeth, he took up a cigarette, nervously lit it, attempted to smoke, and then threw it away. I had never seen the suave, complacent man so unnerved and fidgety. Abruptly he stopped in front of me and smiled almost affectionately.
“You are the very person I want to speak to this morning—you are the only person I want to speak to,” he repeated.
I was a little startled, for his manner was most unlike him. Seldom did he even notice me, just as he did not notice most of Moisheh’s friends. But his exuberant joyousness called out my instinctive response, and before I knew it I was saying, “If there’s anything I can do for you I’ll be only too happy.”
He took a bill from his pocket, placed it in my hand, and said, with repressed excitement: “I want you to take my mother and Moisheh to see ‘Welcome Stranger.’ It’s a great show. It’s going to be a big night with me, and I want them to be happy, too.”