“Why not? You’ll pay wages twice as high as the regular rate, of course,” laughed the workingmen.
“You don’t have to worry about such matters when you deal with me,” he assured them, at the same time thinking of his wife.
“You’ll really pay twice the regular wages?”
“I told you not to worry about that, you blockheads! You’ll get higher pay from me than from anybody else, and you’ll work considerably less.”
They all parted in great contentment. And Drabkin told himself that he had won a victory over his wife after all....
“To-morrow four operators will come here,” he announced to Chyenke when he came home that night. And he began to recite their names. “Abraham, who used to work for Abraham Baer; Labke, who....”
“What are you going to pay them?” she interrupted, scrutinising him closely from under her furrowed brows.
He was silent. He wondered what figure he could name.
“Why don’t you speak?” she asked, more sternly than before, eyeing him more closely.
Suddenly he became bold and self-assertive. Why need he fear her? He’d tell her point-blank! And if she didn’t like it, she’d have to ... that’s all! With a smiling countenance he repeated the details of his arrangements with the workingmen.