Hillel nodded slowly, not without dignity.
"Never mind, Sternsilver," he said; "if my family would got a relation, y'understand, which he is working in Poliakoff's Bank and he is got to run away on account he is missing in five thousand rubles, which it is the same name Sternsilver, and everybody in Kovno—the children even—knows about it, understand me, I wouldn't got to be so stuck up at all."
Sternsilver flushed indignantly.
"Do you mean to told me," he demanded, "that I got in my family such a man which he is stealing five thousand rubles, Fatkin?"
"That's what I said," Hillel retorted.
"Well, it only goes to show what a liar you are," Sternsilver rejoined. "Not only was it he stole ten thousand rubles, y'understand, but the bank was run by a feller by the name Louis Moser."
"All right," Fatkin said as he started up his sewing-machine by way of signifying that the interview was at an end. "All right, Sternsilver; if you got such a relation which he ganvered ten thousand rubles, y'understand, borrow from him the twenty-five dollars."
Thus Sternsilver was obliged to amend his resolution by substituting Jersey City for Philadelphia as the seat of his new start in life; and at half-past eleven that evening, when the good ferryboat Cincinnati drew out of her slip at the foot of Desbrosses Street, a short, thick-set figure leaned over her bow and gazed sadly, perhaps for the last time, at the irregular sky-line of Manhattan. It was Sternsilver.
When Mr. Seiden arrived at his factory the following morning he found his entire force of operators gathered on the stairway and overflowing on to the sidewalk.