"As I tell you; and here am I at sixty about early and late, and my assistant goes to bed."
I began to tremble again.
"Don't keep such a Gentile!" said my mother.
"A Gentile?" said the Röfeh. "Why a Gentile?"
"What's all that to me?" interrupted father, impatiently. "You'd better set to work."
Father was naturally good-tempered; he always seemed to me incapable of hurting a fly, and yet his tone was so full of contempt for the Röfeh.
When he lay sick in bed, he was always glad if anyone came in to have a chat with him, but he could never get on with the Röfeh; he always interrupted him and told him to see to his own business, but this was the first time he had spoken so strongly. It pained me, because how much rougher would he not have been with the other, who was lying ill?
What is wrong with him?
He had said his heart was weak.
What that meant exactly, I did not know; it must be something for which one had to go to bed, and yet my heart told me that I had something to answer for in the matter.