Isadore, already astride his chair, well into
center-table, for first vociferous tear at the four-pound loaf; Esther
Kantor, old at chores, settled an infant into the high chair, careful of
tiny fingers in lowering the wooden bib.
"Papa, Izzy's eating first again."
"Put down that loaf and wait until your mother dishes up or you'll get a
potch you won't soon forget."
"Say, pop--"
"Don't 'say pop' me! I don't want no street-bum freshness from you!"
"I mean, papa, there was an uptown swell in, and she bought one of them
seventy-five-cent candlesticks for the first price,"
"_Schlemmil--Chammer!_" said Mr. Kantor, rinsing his hands at the sink.
"Didn't I always tell you it's the first price times two when you see
up-town business come in? Haven't I learned it to you often enough a
slummer must pay for her nosiness?"
There entered then, on poor shuffling feet, Mannie Kantor so marred in
the mysterious and ceramic process of life that the brain and the soul
had stayed back sooner than inhabit him. Seventeen in years, in the down
upon his face, and in growth unretarded by any great nervosity of
system, his vacuity of face was not that of childhood but rather as if
his light eyes were peering out from some hinterland and wanting so
terribly and so dumbly to communicate what they beheld to brain-cells
closed against himself.
At sight of Mannie, Leon Kantor, the tears still wetly and dirtily down
his cheeks, left off his black, fierce-eyed stare of waiting long enough
to smile, darkly, it is true, but sweetly.
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