Part 42 (2/2)
”Ain't I right, Poil; ain't I, Izzy? Ask your own children!”
Mr. Isadore Binsw.a.n.ger shrugged his custom-made shoulders until the padding bulged like the muscles of a heavy-weight champion, and tossed backward the mane of his black pompadour.
”Ma, I keep my mouth closed. Every time I open it I put my foot in it.”
Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger waggled a rheumatic forefinger.
”A dude like you with a red-and-white s.h.i.+rt like I wouldn't keep in stock ain't--”
”See, ma, you started something.”
”'Sh-h-h! Julius! For your own children I'm ashamed. Once a week Izzy comes out to supper, and like a funeral it is. For your own children to be afraid to open their mouths ain't nothing to be proud of. Right now your own daughter is afraid to begin to tell you something--something what's happened. Ain't it, Poil?”
Miss Pearl Binsw.a.n.ger tugged a dainty bite out of a slice of bread, and showed the oval of her teeth against the clear, gold-olive of her skin.
The same scarf of suns.h.i.+ne fell like a Spanish shawl across her shoulders, and lay warm on her little bosom and across her head, which was small and dark as Giaconda's.
”I ain't saying nothing, am I, mamma? The minute I try to talk to papa about--about moving to the city or anything, he gets excited like the store was on fire.”
”Ya, ya, more as that I get excited over such nonsenses.”
”No, to your papa you children say nothing. It's me that gets my head dinned full. Your children, Julius, think that for me you do anything what I ask you; but I don't see it. Pa.s.s your papa the dumplings, Poil.
Can I help it that he carries on him a face like a funeral?”
”Na, na, Becky; for why should I have a long face? To-morrow I buy me a false face like on Valentine's Day, and then you don't have to look at me no more.”
”See! Right away mad he gets with me. Izzy, them noodles I made only on your account; in the city you don't get 'em like that, huh? Some more _Kartoffel Salad_, Julius?”
”Ya, but not so much! My face don't suit my wife and children yet, that's the latest.”
”Three times a day all week, Izzy, I ask your papa if he don't feel right. 'Yes,' he says, always 'yes.' Like I says to Poil, what's got him since he's in the new store I don't know.”
”_Ach_, you--the whole three of you make me sick! What you want me to do, walk the tight rope to show what a good humor I got?”
”No; we want, Julius, that you should come home every night with a long face on you till for the neighbors I'm ashamed.”
”A little more _Kartoffel Salad_, Becky? Not so much!”
”Like they don't talk enough about us already. With a young lady in the house we live out here where the dogs won't bark at us.”
”I only wish all girls had just so good a home as Pearlie.”
”Aw, papa, that ain't no argument! I'd rather live in a coop in the city, where a girl can have some life, than in a palace out in this hole.”
”Hole, she calls a room like this! A dining-room set she sits on what her grandfather made with his own hands out of the finest cherry wood--”
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