"That's Joseph," says Jeffro, simple. "We are the two that came."
Then he told me. In "the old country" his wife and two little ones were waiting till he could earn money to send back for them.
"I thought when I had thes' little follow here," he said, "I could work then more easy. He don't eat but little," he added.
"But how," says I, "are you expecting to earn all that money out of Friendship Village—where folks saves for years to put on a new stoop?"
At this he smiled, sort of knowing. And he pointed to a poster over his wood-box. It was printed in Yiddish, all but the words "United States"; but the picture—that was plain enough. It showed a mill on one side of the street, and a bank on the other. And from the mill a stream of workingmen, with bags of money on their backs, were streaming over toward the bank.
"That was put up on my cow-shed at home," said Jeffro. "I have brought it. But I have no trade—I can not earn money fast like those. I make the toys."
He threw open the door into the only other room of the house. In it was piled dozens of boxes, and some broad shelves to be put up, and a table was covered with colored stuff. "Then I go up to the city and sell," said he. "It is only five miles. But I can not live there—not with thes' boy. I say, 'I vill find some little cheap place out in the country for us two.' So then I come here. I am now in America five weeks," he added, proud.
"Five weeks!" says I. "Then where'd you learn to talk American?"
"I have study and save' for six-seven years, to be ready," said Jeffro, simple. "Now I come. Next year I think I send for them."