"And I am also to get sick benefits?" Golnik asked.
"You would get just so much sick benefits as anybody else in the society," Birsky replied, "because you could leave that point to me, Golnik, which I forgot to told you, Golnik, that I am the treasurer; so you should please be so good and break it to Bogin and Kanef and the operators. We want to get through with this thing."
For the remainder of the afternoon, therefore, the business premises of Birsky & Zapp were given over to speechmaking on the part of Birsky and Golnik; and when at the conclusion of his fervid oration Golnik exhibited to the hundred operators the passbook of L. Birsky, Treasurer, the enthusiasm it evoked lost nothing by the omission of the conjunctive adverb "as." Indeed, resolutions were passed and spread upon the minutes of such a laudatory character that, until the arrival of Jonas Eschenbach the following morning, there persisted in both Birsky and Zapp a genuine glow of virtue.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Eschenbach?" Louis cried, as Eschenbach cuddled his hand in a warm, fat grasp. "This is my partner, Mr. Zapp."
"Ain't it a fine weather?" Barney remarked after he had undergone the handclasp of philanthropy.
"I bet yer it's a fine weather," Eschenbach said. "Such a fine weather is important for people which is running sick-benefit societies."
"Warum sick-benefit societies, Mr. Eschenbach?"
"Well," Eschenbach replied, "I take it that in a sick-benefit society the health of the members is paramount."
"Sure, it is," Barney agreed. "You couldn't expect otherwise, Mr. Eschenbach, from the Machshovos them fellers eats for their lunch—herring and pickles mit beer."
"I am not speaking from the food they eat," Eschenbach continued; "aber, in bad weather, Mr. Zapp, you must got to expect that a certain proportion of your members would be laid up with colds already."