Rudnik took the card and started for the door, while Belz nodded sadly at his partner.
"And you are kicking I am cranky yesterday morning," he said. "In the daytime is all right going up there, but in the night, Lesengeld, a bloodhound could get twisted. Every time I go up there I think wonder I get back home at all."
"I bet yer," Lesengeld said. "The other evening I seen a fillum by the name Lawst in the Jungle, and——"
"Excuse me, gentlemen," Schindelberger interrupted, "I got a little business to attend to by my office, and if it's all the same to you I would come here with Rudnik to-morrow morning ten o'clock."
"By the name Lawst in the Jungle," Lesengeld repeated with an admonitory glare at Schindelberger, "which a young feller gets ate up with a tiger already; and I says to Mrs. Lesengeld: 'Mommer,' I says, 'people could say all they want to how fine it is to live in the country,' I says, 'give me New York City every time,' I says to my wife."
Harris Rudnik had been encouraged to misogyny by cross eyes and a pockmarked complexion. Nevertheless, he was neither so confirmed in his hatred of the sex nor so discouraged by his physical deformities as to neglect shaving himself and changing into a clean collar and his Sabbath blacks before he began his journey to the Bella Hirshkind Home. Thus when he alighted from the Mount Vernon car at Ammerman Avenue he presented, at least from the rear, so spruce an appearance as to attract the notice of no less a person than Miss Blooma Duckman herself.
Miss Duckman was returning from an errand on which she had been dispatched by the superintendent of the Home, for of all the inmates she was not only the youngest but the spryest, and although she was at least half a block behind Harris when she first caught sight of him, she had no difficulty in overtaking him before he reached the railroad track.
"Excuse me," she said as he hesitated at the side of the track, "are you maybe looking for the Bella Hirshkind Home?"
Harris started and blushed, but at length his misogyny asserted itself and he turned a beetling frown on Miss Duckman.