THE SADER GUEST
Rosnofsky was explaining to me his theory of the lost blue with which the ancient Hebrew priests dyed the talith, when the door opened and lanky Lazarus entered, hat in hand. He entered cautiously, keeping one hand on the doorknob, and one foot firmly planted for a backward spring. He seemed rather embarrassed to find a third person present, but the matter that he had on his mind was weighty—so weighty, in fact, that, after a moment’s hesitation, he plunged right into the heart of it.
“Mr. Rosnofsky,” he said, “I love your daughter.”
Rosnofsky’s eyes opened wide, and his mouth shut tight.
“And she loves me,” Lazarus went on.
Rosnofsky’s eyes contracted, until they gleamed through the tiniest kind of a slit between the lids. His hand fumbled behind his back among a number of tailor’s tools that lay on the table.
“And I have come to ask your consent to our marriage.”
Crash! Rosnofsky’s aim was bad. The shears, instead of reaching Lazarus, shattered the window pane. Lazarus was flying rapidly down the street. Then Rosnofsky turned to me.
“And this mixture, as I was saying, will produce exactly the same blue that the Talmud describes.”
It was worth while to become acquainted with Rosnofsky. When aroused, or crossed, or seriously annoyed, he had a frightful temper, and the man whose misfortune it had been to stir him up was the object of a malediction as bitter as it was fierce, extending through all his family for, usually, a dozen generations. Then, in startling contrast to this, he was a devout son of Abraham, and, in moments of serious reflection, would be almost overcome by a feeling of piety, and at such times all that was good and noble in his nature asserted itself. It was a strange blending of the prosaic with the patriarchal.