The Competitive Nephew Part 9

He was addressing Mrs. Miriam Saphir, who sat on the edge of the chair nursing her cheek with her left hand. Simultaneously she rocked to and fro and beat her forehead with her clenched fist, while at intervals she made inarticulate sounds through her nose significant of intense suffering.

"I should drop dead in this chair if she didn't," she contended. "Why should I lie to you, Mr. Seiden? My own daughter, which I called her Bessie for this here Pesach Gubin, should never got a husband and my other children also, which one of 'em goes around on crutches right now, Mr. Seiden, on account she gets knocked down by a truck."

"Well, why didn't she sue him in the courts yet?" Seiden asked. "From being knocked down by a truck many a rich feller got his first start in business already."

"Her luck, Mr. Seiden!" Mrs. Saphir cried. "A greenhorn owns the truck which it even got a chattel mortgage on it. Such _Schlemazel_ my family got it, Mr. Seiden! If it would be your Beckie, understand me, the least that happens is that a millionaire owns the truck and he settles out of court for ten thousand dollars yet. Some people, if they would be shot with a gun, the bullet is from gold and hits 'em in the pocket already--such luck they got it."

"That ain't here nor there, Mrs. Saphir," Seiden declared. "Why should I got to give your Bessie a job, when already I got so many people hanging around my shop, half the time they are spending treading on their toes?"

"_Ai, tzuris!_" Mrs. Saphir wailed. "My own husband's Uncle Pesach is from his wife a cousin and he asks me why! Who should people look to for help if it wouldn't be their family, Mr. Seiden? Should I go and beg from strangers?"

Here Mrs. Saphir succ.u.mbed to a wave of self-pity, and she wept aloud.

"_Koosh!_" Mr. Seiden bellowed. "What do you think I am running here--a cemetery? If you want to cry you should go out on the sidewalk."

"Such hearts people got it," Mrs. Seiden sobbed, "like a piece from ice."

"'S enough!" said Mr. Seiden. "I wasted enough time already. You took up pretty near my whole morning, Mrs. Saphir; so once and for all I am telling you you should send your Bessie to work as a learner Monday morning, and if she gets worth it I would pay her just the same wages like anybody else."

Mrs. Saphir dried her eyes with the back of her hand, while Mr. Seiden walked into his workroom and slammed the door behind him as evidence that the interview was at an end. When he returned a few minutes later Mrs. Saphir was still there waiting for him.

"Well," he demanded, "what d'ye want of me now?"

For answer Mrs. Saphir beat her forehead and commenced to rock anew.

"My last ten cents I am spending it for carfare," she cried.

"What is that got to do with me?" Seiden asked. "People comes into my office and takes up my whole morning disturbing my business, and I should pay 'em carfare yet? An idee!"

"Only one way I am asking," Mrs. Saphir said.

"I wouldn't even give you a transfer ticket," Mr. Seiden declared, and once more he banged the door behind him with force sufficient to shiver its ground-gla.s.s panel.

Mrs. Saphir waited for an interval of ten minutes and then she gathered her shawl about her; and with a final adjustment of her c.r.a.pe bonnet she shuffled out of the office.

Miss Bessie Saphir was a chronic "learner"--that is to say, she had never survived the period of instruction in any of the numerous shirt, cloak, dress, and clothing factories in which she had sought employment; and at the end of her second month in the workshop of the Sanspareil Waist Company she appeared to know even less about the manufacture of waists than she did at the beginning of her first week.

"How could any one be so _dumm_!" Philip Sternsilver cried as he held up a damaged garment for his employer's inspection, "I couldn't understand at all. That's the tenth waist Bessie Saphir ruins on us."

"_Dumm!_" Mr. Seiden exclaimed. "What d'ye mean, dumb? You are getting altogether too independent around here, Sternsilver."

"Me--independent!" Philip rejoined. "For what reason I am independent, Mr. Seiden? I don't understand what you are talking about at all."

"No?" Seiden said. "Might you don't know you are calling my wife's relation dumb, Sternsilver? From a big mouth a feller like you could get himself into a whole lot of trouble."

"Me calling your wife's relation dumb, Mr. Seiden?" Sternsilver cried in horrified accents. "I ain't never said nothing of the sort. What I am saying is that that _dummer_ cow over there--that Bessie Saphir--is _dumm_. I ain't said a word about your wife's relations."

"Loafer!" Seiden shouted in a frenzy. "What d'ye mean?"

Sternsilver commenced to perspire.

"What do I mean?" he murmured. "Why, I am just telling you what I mean."

"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 relationship 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."