"What do I mean?" he murmured. "Why, I am just telling you what I mean."
"If it wouldn't be our busy season," Seiden continued, "I would fire you right out of here und fertig. Did you ever hear the like? Calls my wife's cousin, Miss Bessie Saphir, a dummer Ochs!"
"How should I know she's your wife's cousin, Mr. Seiden?" Sternsilver protested. "Did she got a label on her?"
"Gets fresh yet!" Seiden exclaimed. "Never mind, Sternsilver. If the learners is dumm it's the foreman's fault; and if you couldn't learn the learners properly I would got to get another foreman which he could learn, and that's all there is to it."
He stalked majestically away while Sternsilver turned and gazed at the unconscious subject of their conversation. As he watched her bending over her sewing-machine a sense of injustice rankled in his breast, for there could be no doubt the epithet dummer Ochs, as applied to Miss Saphir, was not only justified but eminently appropriate.
Her wide cheekbones, flat nose, and expressionless eyes suggested at once the calm, ruminating cow; and there was not even lacking a piece of chewing-gum between her slowly moving jaws to complete the portrait.
"A girl like her should got rich relations yet," he murmured to himself. "A Schnorrer wouldn't marry her, not if her uncles was Rothschilds oder Carnegies. You wouldn't find the mate to her outside a dairy farm."
As he turned away, however, the sight of Hillel Fatkin wielding a pair of shears gave him the lie; for, if Miss Bessie Saphir's cheekbones were broad, Hillel's were broader. In short, Hillel's features compared to Bessie's as the head of a Texas steer to that of a Jersey heifer.
Sternsilver noticed the resemblance with a smile just as Mr. Seiden returned to the workroom.
"Sternsilver," he said, "ain't you got nothing better to do that you should be standing around grinning like a fool? Seemingly you think a foreman don't got to work at all."