She laid her hand on Yetta's arm and her face broke into a thousand tiny wrinkles of hospitality.
"You should come Friday to lunch sure," she declared, "and we would got some brown stewed fish sweet and sour and a good plate of Bortch to begin with."
Sol Klinger had been leaning back in his chair in an effort to overhear their conversation, and at this announcement he broke into a broad guffaw, which ran around the table after he had related the cause of it to his guests. Indeed, so much did Sol relish the joke that with it he entertained the occupants of about a dozen seats in the smoking car of the 8:04 express the next morning, and he was so full of it when he entered Hammersmith's Restaurant the following noon that he could not forego the pleasure of visiting Marcus Polatkin's table and relating it to Polatkin himself.
Polatkin heard him through without a smile and when at its conclusion Klinger broke into a hysterical appreciation of his own humour, Polatkin shrugged.
"I suppose, Klinger," he said, "your poor mother, olav hasholom, didn't wear a sheitel neither, ain't it?"
"My mother, olav hasholom, would got more sense as to butt in to a place like that," Klinger retorted.
"Even if you wouldn't of been ashamed to have taken her there, Klinger," he added.
Klinger flushed angrily.
"That ain't here or there, Polatkin," he said. "You should ought to put your partner wise, Polatkin, that he shouldn't go dragging in an old Bubé into a place like the Salisbury and talking such nonsense like brown stewed fish sweet and sour."
He broke into another laugh at the recollection of it—a laugh that was louder but hardly as unforced as the first one.