"Ain't it funny how things happens?" he said. "Honestly, Lesengeld, ain't that more interesting than most things you could see it on a moving pictures?"
Lesengeld nodded sulkily.
"It sure ought to be," he said, "because to go on a moving pictures you pay only ten cents, aber this here story costs me my half of a three-hundred-and-fifty dollar bonus. However, I suppose I shouldn't begrudge it 'em. I seen the other evening a fillum by the name The Return of Enoch Aarons, where an old feller stands outside on the street and looks through a winder, and he sees a happy married couple mit children sitting in front of a fire. So I says to my wife: 'Mommer,' I says, 'if that old snoozer would only get married,' I says, 'he wouldn't got to stand outside winders looking at other people having a good time,' I says. 'He would be enjoying with his own wife and children,' I says, and I thinks right away of Rudnik here." He placed his hand on Rudnik's shoulder as he spoke. "But now Rudnik is married," he concluded, "and even if he wouldn't got children he's got a good wife anyhow, which it stands in the Siddur already—a good wife is more valuable as rubies."
Rudnik seized the hand of his blushing bride. "And," he added, "rubies is pretty high nowadays."
CHAPTER EIGHT
COERCING MR. TRINKMANN
"I don't know, Mr. Trinkmann, what comes over you, you are always picking on me," Louis Berkfield said. "Me, I am doing my best here."
"You are doing your best here, Louis!" Harris Trinkmann exclaimed. "Do you call them ashtrays doing your best? They got on them Schmutz from the time I bought 'em off of Dreiner which he busted up way before the Spanish War already. The knives and forks, too, Louis. Do you think it's a pleasure to a customer when he is eating Kalbfleisch that he finds on his fork a piece of Bismarck herring from last night already? You are ruining my trade, Louis."
"What do you mean, ruining your trade, Mr. Trinkmann?" Louis rejoined. "I ain't no pantryman. If the customers complains that the fork got on it a piece Bismarck herring, that is from the pantryman a Schuld. What have I got to do with herring on the forks?"