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?"

"You got everything to do with it," Trink