"Begin higher up! There is room there for a whole line. Why did you put 'to my beloved Father' so low down?" shrieked Yainkele.
"Where am I to put it, then? In the sky, eh?" asked Berele, and pushed Yainkele aside.
"Go away, I will leave you half. Don't confuse me!—You be quiet!" and Yainkele moved away, and stared with terrified eyes at Berele, as he sat there, bent double, and wrote and wrote, knitted his brows, and dipped the pen, and reflected, and wrote again.
"That's enough!" screamed Yainkele, after a few minutes.
"It's not the half yet," answered Berele, writing on.
"But I ought to have more than half!" said Yainkele, crossly. The longing to write, to pour out his heart onto the post-card, was overwhelming him.
But Berele did not even hear: he had launched out into such rhetorical Hebrew expressions as "First of all, I let you know that I am alive and well," which he had learnt in "The Perfect Letter-Writer," and his little bits of news remained unwritten. He had yet to abuse Lezer the carrier, to tell how many pages of the Gemoreh he had learnt, to let them know they were to send another parcel, because they had no "Monday" and no "Wednesday," and the "Tuesday" was no better than nothing.
And Berele writes and writes, and Yainkele can no longer contain himself—he sees that Berele is taking up more than half the card.
"Enough!" He ran forward with a cry, and seized the penholder.
"Three words more!" begged Berele.