Part 9 (2/2)
”If it wouldn't be our busy season,” Seiden continued, ”I would fire you right out of here _und fertig_. Did you ever hear the like? Calls my wife's cousin, Miss Bessie Saphir, a _dummer Ochs_!”
”How should I know she's your wife's cousin, Mr. Seiden?” Sternsilver protested. ”Did she got a label on her?”
”Gets fresh yet!” Seiden exclaimed. ”Never mind, Sternsilver. If the learners is _dumm_ it's the foreman's fault; and if you couldn't learn the learners properly I would got to get another foreman which he could learn, and that's all there is to it.”
He stalked majestically away while Sternsilver turned and gazed at the unconscious subject of their conversation. As he watched her bending over her sewing-machine a sense of injustice rankled in his breast, for there could be no doubt the epithet _dummer Ochs_, as applied to Miss Saphir, was not only justified but eminently appropriate.
Her wide cheekbones, flat nose, and expressionless eyes suggested at once the calm, ruminating cow; and there was not even lacking a piece of chewing-gum between her slowly moving jaws to complete the portrait.
”A girl like her should got rich relations yet,” he murmured to himself. ”A _Schnorrer_ wouldn't marry her, not if her uncles was Rothschilds _oder_ Carnegies. You wouldn't find the mate to her outside a dairy farm.”
As he turned away, however, the sight of Hillel Fatkin wielding a pair of shears gave him the lie; for, if Miss Bessie Saphir's cheekbones were broad, Hillel's were broader. In short, Hillel's features compared to Bessie's as the head of a Texas steer to that of a Jersey heifer.
Sternsilver noticed the resemblance with a smile just as Mr. Seiden returned to the workroom.
”Sternsilver,” he said, ”ain't you got nothing better to do that you should be standing around grinning like a fool? Seemingly you think a foreman don't got to work at all.”
”I was laying out some work for the operators over there, Mr. Seiden,”
Philip replied. ”Oncet in a while a feller must got to think, Mr.
Seiden.”
”What d'ye mean, think?” Seiden exclaimed. ”Who asks you you should think, Sternsilver? You get all of a sudden such _grossartig_ notions.
'Must got to think,' _sagt er_! I am the only one which does the thinking here, Sternsilver. Now you go right ahead and tend to them basters.”
Sternsilver retired at once to the far end of the workroom, where he proceeded to relieve his outraged feeling by criticising Hillel Fatkin's work in excellent imitation of his employer's bullying manner.
”What is the matter, Mr. Sternsilver, you are all the time picking on me so?” Hillel demanded. ”I am doing my best here and certainly if you don't like my work I could quick go somewheres else. I ain't a _Schnorrer_ exactly, Mr. Sternsilver. I got in savings bank already a couple hundred dollars which I could easy start a shop of my own; so I ain't asking no favours from n.o.body.”
”You shouldn't worry yourself, Fatkin,” Sternsilver said. ”n.o.body is going to do you no favours around here. On the contrary, Fatkin, the way you are ruining garments around here, sooner as do you favours we would sue you in the courts yet, and you could kiss yourself good-bye with your two hundred dollars in savings bank. Furthermore, for an operator you are altogether too independent, Fatkin.”
”Maybe I am and maybe I ain't,” Fatkin retorted with simple dignity.
”My father was anyhow from decent, respectable people in Grodno, Sternsilver; and even if I wouldn't got a sister which she is married to Sam Kupferberg's cousin, y'understand, Sam would quick fix me up by the Madison Street court. You shouldn't throw me no bluffs, Sternsilver. Go ahead and sue.”
He waited for his foreman to utter a suitable rejoinder, but none came, for in Fatkin's disclosure of a two-hundred dollar deposit in the savings bank and his sister's relations.h.i.+p to Sam Kupferberg, the well-known legal pract.i.tioner of Madison Street, Philip Sternsilver conceived a brilliant idea.
”I ain't saying we would sue you exactly, understand me,” he replied.
”All I am saying, Hillel, is you should try and be a little more careful with your work, y'understand.”
Here Sternsilver looked over from Hillel's bovine features to the dull countenance of Miss Bessie Saphir.
”A feller which he has got money in the bank and comes from decent, respectable people like you, Hillel,” he concluded, ”if they work hard there is nothing which they couldn't do, y'understand. All they got to look out for is they shouldn't Jonah themselves with their bosses, y'understand.”
”Bosses!” Hillel repeated. ”What d'ye mean, bosses? Might you got an idee you are my boss maybe, Sternsilver?”
”Me, I ain't saying nothing about it at all,” Sternsilver declared. ”I am only saying something which it is for your own good; and if you don't believe me, Hillel, come out with me lunch time and have a cup coffee. I got a few words, something important, to tell you.”
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