“Who is he?” the boy asked in his high tough little voice, never moving his curious gaze from Eugene.
“He’s my teacher,” Abe said. “He’s the guy that teaches me.”
“Ah, g’wan!” the child answered in a protesting tone, still fixing Eugene with his steady and puzzled stare.
“Whatcha handin’me? He’s not!”
“Sure he is! No kiddin’!” Abe replied. “He’s the guy that teaches me English.”
“Ah, he’s not!” the boy answered decisively. “Yuh’re bein’wise.”
“What makes you think he’s not?” Abe asked.
“If he’s an English teacher,” Jimmy said triumphantly, “w’y don’t he say somet’ing? W’y don’t he use some of dose woids?”
“Oh-ho-ho-ho!” cried Abe, lifting his great bleak nose aloft. “Say!… This is good!… This is swell!… Say, that’s some kid!” he said when the boy had departed. “There’s not much gets by him!” And lifting his grey face heavenward again, he laughed softly, painfully, in gleeful and tender reminiscence.
Thus, the whole care and government of the boy had been entrusted to Abe and his mother: Sylvia herself, although she paid liberally all her child’s expenses, took no other interest in him. She was a hard, feverish, bitter, and over-stimulated woman, and yet she had a kind of harsh loyalty to her family: she was, in a fierce and smouldering way, very ambitious for Abe, who seemed to be the most promising of her brothers: she was determined that he should go to college and become a lawyer, and his fees at the university, in part at any rate, were paid by his sister—in part only, not because Sylvia would not have paid all without complaint, but because Abe insisted on paying as much as he could through his own labour, for Abe, too, had embedded in him a strong granite of independence, the almost surly dislike, of a strong and honest character, of being beholden to anyone for favours. On this score, indeed, he had the most sensitive and tender pride of anyone Eugene had ever known.
At home Abe had become, by unspoken consent, the head of a family which now consisted only of his mother, two brothers, and his sister’s illegitimate child Jimmy. Two of his older brothers, who were in business together, had married and lived away from home, as did Sylvia, and another sister, Rose, who had married a musician in a theatre orchestra a year or two before; she was a dark, tortured and sensitive Jewess with a big
