Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/113

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109

large table covered with books, repeated every time like an echo:

"Chatzkele, let mother alone!"

And Chatzkele, for all the notice he took, might have been as deaf as the bedpost. Ille loo The minute Seinwill saw me, he ran to meet me in a shamefaced way, like a sinner caught in the act; and before I was able to say a word, that is, tell him angrily and with decision that he must give me my book finished or not-never mind about the twenty kopeks, and so on—and thus revenge myself on him, he began to answer, and he showed me that my book was done, it was already in the press, and there only remained the lettering to be done on the back. Just a few minutes more, and he would bring it to my house.

"No, I will wait and take it myself," I said, rather vexed.

Besides, I knew that to stamp a few letters on a book- cover could not take more than a few minutes at most.

"Well, if you are so good as to wait, it will not take long. There is a fire in the oven, I have only just got to heat the screw."

And so saying, he placed a chair for me, dusted it with the flap of his coat, and I sat down to wait. Seinwill really took my book out of the press quite finished except for the lettering on the cover, and began to hurry. Now he is by the oven-from the oven to the corner—and once more to the oven and back to the corner—and so on ten times over, saying to me. every time:

"There, directly, directly, in another minute," and back once more across the room.