It appeared that the dinner was already over, and David could obtain nothing but half-warmed remains. However, hunger and hope gave sauce to the miserable meal, and he profited by the absence of custom to pump the landlord anent the leading citizens.
'But you will not get violin lessons from any of them,' his host warned him. 'Tinowitz the corn-factor has daughters who are said to read Christian story-books, but is it likely he will risk their falling in love with a young man whose hair and clothes are cut like a Christian's? Not that I share his prejudices, of course. I have seen the great world, and understand that it is possible to carry a handkerchief on the Sabbath and still be a good man.'
'I haven't come to give lessons in music,' said David bluntly, 'but in shooting.'
'Shooting?' The landlord stared. 'Aren't you a Jew, then, sir? I beg your pardon.' His voice had suddenly taken on the same ring as when he addressed the Poritz (Polish nobleman). His oleaginous familiarity was gone.
'Salachti!' (I have forgiven), said David in Hebrew, and laughed at the man's bemused visage. 'Don't you think, considering what has been happening, it is high time the Jews of Milovka learned to shoot?'
The landlord looked involuntarily round the room for a possible spy. 'Guard your tongue!' he murmured, terror-stricken.
David laughed on. 'You, my friend, shall be my first pupil.'
'God forbid! And I must beg you to find other lodgings.'
David smiled grimly at this first response to his mission. 'I dare say I shall find another stove,' he said cheerfully—at which the landlord, who had never in his life taken such a decisive step, began to think he had gone too far. 'You will take the advice of a man who knows the world,' he said in a tone of compromise, 'and throw all those crazy notions into the river where you cast your sins at New Year. A young, fine-looking man like you! Why, I can find you a Shidduch (marriage) that will keep you in clover the rest of your life.'
'Ha! ha! ha! How do you know I'm not married?'