The Competitive Nephew Part 43

Belz met this appeal with stolid indifference.

"Of course, Rudnik," he said, "I'm sorry you got run over with a train; but if we would extend your mortgage on account you got run over with a train and our other mortgagees hears of it, understand me, the way money is so tight nowadays, every time a mortgage comes due them suckers would ring in trollyer-car accidents on us and fall down coal-holes so as we would give 'em an extension already."

"And wouldn't it make no difference that I just got married?" Rudnik asked.

"If an old feller like you gets married, Rudnik," Belz replied, "he must got to take the consequences."

"An idee!" Lesengeld exclaimed. "Do you think that we are making wedding presents to our mortgagees yet, Rudnik?"

"It serves you right, Rudnik," Schindelberger said. "If you would consent to the Home getting your property I wouldn't said nothing about Miss Duckman's disappearing and Belz would of extended the mortgage on you."

"I was willing to do it," Rudnik said, "_aber_ my wife wouldn't let me.

She says rather than see the house go that way she would let you gentlemen foreclose it on us, even if she would got to starve."

"I don't know who your wife is," Schindelberger rejoined angrily, "but she talks like a big fool."

"No, she don't," Rudnik retorted; "she talks like a sensible woman, because, in the first place, she wouldn't got to starve. I got enough strength left that I could always make for her and me anyhow a living, and, in the second place, the Home really ain't a home. It's a business."

"A business!" Schindelberger cried. "What d'ye mean, a business?"

"I mean a business," Rudnik replied, "an underwear business. Them poor women up there makes underwear from morning till night already, and Schindelberger here got a brother-in-law which he buys it from the Home for pretty near half as much as it would cost him to make it."

"_Rosher!_" Max Schindelberger shrieked. "Who tells you such stories?"

"My wife tells me," Rudnik replied.

"And how does your wife know it?" Belz demanded.

"Because," Rudnik answered, "she once used to live in the Home."

"Then that only goes to show what a liar you are," Schindelberger said.

"Your wife couldn't of been in the Home on account it only gets started last year, and everybody which went in there ain't never come out yet."

"Everybody but one," Rudnik said as he seized his cane, and raising himself from the chair he hobbled to the door.

"Blooma _leben_," he cried, throwing the door wide open; and in response Mrs. Rudnik, nee Blooma Duckman, entered.

"_Nu_, Belz," she said, "ain't you going to congradulate me?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Nu, Belz, ain't you going to congradulate me?"]

Belz sat back in his chair and stared at his wife's cousin in unaffected astonishment, while Schindelberger noiselessly opened the door and slid out of the room unnoticed.

"And so you run away from the Home and married this _Schnorrer_?" Belz said at length.

"_Schnorrer_ he ain't," she retorted, "unless you would go to work and foreclose the house."

"It would serve you right if I did," Belz rejoined.

"Then you ain't going to?" Mrs. Rudnik asked.

"What d'ye mean, he ain't going to?" Lesengeld interrupted. "Ain't I got nothing to say here? Must I got to sacrifice myself for Belz's wife's relations?"

"_Koosh_, Lesengeld!" Belz exploded. "You take too much on yourself. Do you think for one moment I am going to foreclose that mortgage and have them two old people _schnorring_ their living expenses out of me for the rest of my days, just to oblige you? The mortgage runs at 6 per cent., and it's going to continue to do so. Six per cent. ain't to be sneezed at, neither."

"And ain't he going to pay us no bonus nor nothing?" Lesengeld asked in anguished tones.

"Bonus!" Belz cried; "what are you talking about, bonus? Do you mean to told me you would ask an old man which he nearly gets killed by a train already a bonus yet? Honestly, Lesengeld, I'm surprised at you. The way you talk sometimes it ain't no wonder people calls us second-mortgage sharks."

"But, lookyhere, Belz----" Lesengeld began.

"'S enough, Lesengeld," Belz interrupted. "You're lucky I don't ask you you should make 'em a wedding present yet."

"I suppose, Belz, you're going to make 'em a wedding present, too, ain't it?" Lesengeld jeered.

"That's just what I'm going to do," Belz said as he turned to the safe.

He fumbled round the middle compartment and finally produced two yellow slips of paper. "I'm going to give 'em these here composition notes of Schindelberger's, and with what Blooma knows about the way that _Rosher_ is running the Bella Hirshkind Home she shouldn't got no difficulty making him pay up."

He handed the notes to Rudnik.

"And now," he said, "sit right down and tell us how it comes that you and Blooma gets married."

For more than a quarter of an hour Rudnik described the details of his meeting with Miss Blooma Duckman, together with his hopes and aspirations for the future, and when he concluded Belz turned to his partner.

"Ain't it funny how things happens?" he said. "Honestly, Lesengeld, ain't that more interesting than most things you could see it on a moving pictures?"

Lesengeld nodded sulkily.

"It sure ought to be," he said, "because to go on a moving pictures you pay only ten cents, _aber_ this here story costs me my half of a three-hundred-and-fifty dollar bonus. However, I suppose I shouldn't begrudge it 'em. I seen the other evening a fillum by the name The Return of Enoch Aarons, where an old feller stands outside on the street and looks through a winder, and he sees a happy married couple _mit_ children sitting in front of a fire. So I says to my wife: 'Mommer,' I says, 'if that old snoozer would only get married,' I says, 'he wouldn't got to stand outside winders looking at other people having a good time,' I says. 'He would be enjoying with his own wife and children,' I says, and I thinks right away of Rudnik here." He placed his hand on Rudnik's shoulder as he spoke. "But now Rudnik is married," he concluded, "and even if he wouldn't got children he's got a good wife anyhow, which it stands in the _Siddur_ already--a good wife is more valuable as rubies."

Rudnik seized the hand of his blushing bride. "And," he added, "rubies is pretty high nowadays."

CHAPTER EIGHT

COERCING MR. TRINKMANN

"I don't know, Mr. Trinkmann, what comes over you, you are always picking on me," Louis Berkfield said. "Me, I am doing my best here."

"You are doing your best here, Louis!" Harris Trinkmann exclaimed. "Do you call them ashtrays doing your best? They got on them _Schmutz_ from the time I bought 'em off of Dreiner which he busted up way before the Spanish War already. The knives and forks, too, Louis. Do you think it's a pleasure to a customer when he is eating _Kalbfleisch_ that he finds on his fork a piece of Bismarck herring from last night already?

You are ruining my trade, Louis."

"What do you mean, ruining your trade, Mr. Trinkmann?" Louis rejoined.

"I ain't no pantryman. If the customers complains that the fork got on it a piece Bismarck herring, that is from the pantryman a _Schuld_.

What have I got to do with herring on the forks?"