Just Around the Corner Part 47

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger read his evening menu with the furrow deepening between his eyes.

"Such a soup they got! Mulla-ga-what?"

"'Shh-h-h, papa; mullagatawny! Rice soup."

"Mullagatawny! Fine mess!"

"'Shh-h-h, Julius; don't talk so loud. Does the whole dining-room got to know you don't know nothing?"

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger took nervous resume of the red-and-gold, bright-lighted dining-room.

"For a plate of noodles soup, Becky, they can have all their mullagatawny! Fifteen cents for a plate of soup, Becky, and at home for that you could make a whole pot full twice so good."

"'Sh-h-h-h, papa."

"Don't '_sh-h-h-h-h_ me no more neither, Pearlie. Five months, from October to February, I been shooed like I was one of our roosters at home got over in Schlossman's yard. There, you read for me, Izzy; such language I don't know."

Isadore took up a card and crinkled one eye in a sly wink toward his mother and sister.

"_Rinderbrust und Kartoffel Salad_, pa, _mit Apful Kuchen und Kaletraufschnitt._"

"Ya, ya, make fun yet! A square meal like that should happen to me yet in a highway-robbery place like this."

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger straightened her large-bosomed, stiff-corseted figure in its large-design, black-lace basque, and pulled gently at her daughter's flesh-colored chiffon sleeve, which fell from her shoulders like angels'

wings.

"Look across the room, Poil. There's Max just coming in the dining-room with his mother. Always the first thing he looks over at our table. Bow, Julius; don't you see across the room the Teitlebaums coming in? I guess old man Teitlebaum is out on the road again."

Miss Binsw.a.n.ger flushed the same delicate pink as her chiffon, and showed her oval teeth in a vivid smile.

"Ain't he silly, though, to-night, mamma! Look, when he holds up two fingers at me it means first he takes his mother up to her pinochle club, and then by nine o'clock he comes back to me."

"How good that woman has got it! Look, Poil, another waist she's wearing again."

"Look how he pulls out the chair for his mother, Izzy. It would hurt you to do that for me and mamma, wouldn't it?"

"Say, missy, I learnt manners two years before you ever done anything but hold down the front porch out on Newton Avenue. I'd been meetin'

Max Teitlebaum and Ignatz Landauer and that crowd over at the Young Men's a.s.sociation before you'd ever been to the movie with anybody except Meena Schlossman."

"I don't see that all your good start got you anywheres."

"Don't let swell society go to your head, missy. You ain't got Max yet, neither. You ought to be ashamed to be so crazy about a boy. Wait till I tell you something when we get up-stairs that'll take some of your kink out, missy."

"Children, children, hush your fussing! Julius, don't read all the names off the bill of fare."

Miss Binsw.a.n.ger regarded her brother under level brows, and threw him a retort that sizzed across the table like drops of water on a hot stove-top.

"Anyways, if I was a fellow that couldn't keep a job more than two months at a time I'd lay quiet. I wouldn't be out of a job all the time, and beggin' my father to set me up in business when I was always getting fired from every place I worked."

"Children!"

"Well, he always starts with me, mamma."

"Izzy, ain't you got no respect for your sister? For Gawd's sakes take that bill of fare away from your papa, Izzy. He'll burn a hole in it.

Always the prices he reads out loud till so embarra.s.sed I get. No ears and eyes he has for anything else. He reads and reads, but enough he don't eat to keep alive a bird."

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger drew his spectacles off his nose, snapped them into a worn-leather case and into his vest pocket; a wan smile lay on his lips.

"I got only eyes for you, Becky, eh? All dressed up, ain't you?--black lace yet! What you think of your mamma, children? Young she gets, not?"

"_Ach_, Julius!"

The little bout of tenderness sent a smile around the table, and behind the veil of her lashes Miss Binsw.a.n.ger sent the arrow of a glance across the room.

"Honest, mamma, I wonder if Max sees anything green on me."

"He sees something sweet on you, maybe, Poil. Izzy, pa.s.s your papa some radishes. Not a thing does that man eat, and such an appet.i.te he used to have."

"Radishes better as these we get in our yard at home. Ten cents for six radishes! Against my appet.i.te it goes to eat 'em, when in my yard at home--"

"Home, always home!"

"Papa, please don't put your napkin in your collar like a bib. Mamma, make him take it out. Honest, even for the waiter I'm ashamed. How he watches us, too, and laffs behind the tray."

"Leave me alone, Pearlie. My s.h.i.+rt-front I don't use for no bib! Laundry rates in this hold-up place ain't so cheap."

"Mamma, please make him take it out."

"Julius!"

"Look, papa, at the Teitlebaums and Schoenfeldts, laughing at us, papa.

Look now at him, mamma; just for to spite me he bends over and drinks his soup out loud out of the tip of his spoon--please, papa."

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger jerked his napkin from its mooring beneath each ear and peered across at his daughter with his face as deeply creased as a raisin.

"I wish," he said, low in his throat, and with angry emphasis quivering his lips behind the gray and black bristles of his mustache--"ten times a day I wish I was back in my little house in Newton, where I got my comfort and my peace--you children I got to thank for this, you children."

Mr. Isadore Binsw.a.n.ger replaced his spoon in his soup-plate and leaned back against his chair.

"Aw now, papa, for G.o.d's sakes don't begin!"

"You good-for-nothing, you! With your hair combed up straight on your head like a girl's, and a pleated s.h.i.+rt like I'd be ashamed to carry in stock, you got no put-in! If I give you five thousand dollars for a business for yourself you don't care so much what kind of manners I got.

Five thousand dollars he asks me for to go in business when he ain't got it in him to keep a job for six months."

"The last job wasn't--"

"Right now in this highway-robbery hotel you got me into, I got to pay your board for you--if you want five thousand dollars from me you got to get rid of me some way, for my insurance policy is all I can say. And sometimes I wish you would--easier for me it would be."

"Julius!"