VII
Elkan Goldblatt usually arrived home at seven o'clock to find his dinner smoking on the table. His daughter Fannie always attended to the carving, but on the night of the foreclosure sale it was Birdie who presided at the head of the board.
"Where's Fannie?" he asked.
"She went out to dinner," Birdie explained.
Elkan nodded and lapsed into gloomy silence.
"What's the matter now?" Birdie inquired.
"That lowlife Margolius," he said, "what do you think from that loafer? He goes to work and gets married."
Birdie gasped and turned white, all of which her father mistook for symptoms of astonishment.
"Ain't that a loafer for you?" he continued. "All the time he hangs around here, and then he goes to work and gets married."