"I don't know," I said, "but that is what he told me."
"All right!" said Manasseh's wife. "I'll teach him a lesson he won't forget in a hurry."
With these words she departed.
When she had left the room, I pictured to myself poor consumptive Manasseh being taught a "lesson" by his yellow-haired wife, and I pitied him.
Manasseh was a man of about thirty. His yellowish-white face was set in a black beard; he was very thin, always ailing and coughing, had never learnt to write, and he read only Yiddish—a quiet, respectable man, I might almost say the only hand in the shop who never grudged a fellow-worker his livelihood. He had been only a year in the country, and the others made sport of him, but I always stood up for him, because I liked him very much.
Wherever does he go, now? I wondered to myself, and I resolved to find out.
Next morning I met Manasseh as usual, and at first I intended to tell him of his wife's visit to me the day before; but the poor operative looked so low-spirited, so thoroughly unhappy, that I felt sure his wife had already given him the promised "lesson," and I hadn't the courage to mention her to him just then.
In the evening, as we were going home from the workshop, Manasseh said to me:
"Did my wife come to see you yesterday?"
"Yes, Brother Manasseh," I answered. "She seemed something annoyed with you."