good enough. Good day! Go find a Rollo, a Schmollo! Good-bye!”
She did not care whether he came or went, lived or died, but she had told all her friends that he was desperately in love with her. He, for his part, was sick and tired of the whole affair, and she could see it. One syllable, now—one brusque Go might have sent Yisroel Schmulowitz stamping away. Sensing this, she cried, and said, through her tears: “It’s not what you’re called, it’s what you are that counts!”
She had got this out of some novelette, no doubt. It was a little too deep for Schmulowitz, who in any case was powerless in the presence of a weeping woman. He cried himself when he saw a woman shedding tears, thinking of his mother, so this fool, missing a heaven-sent opportunity of giving himself a better wife, and Charles Small a different mother, pulled out a silk handkerchief, saying: “Rollo, Schmollo, Wollo, Bollo, call me what you like!”
“A rose by any other name would smell,” she sobbed.
So they were engaged. He had to give her a ring, of course, but he had very little money to spend. Millie’s youngest sister Lily was married to a prosperous photographer who had given her an engagement ring that cost £85—the whole family had seen the receipt; after which young Lily had acquired a maddening habit of touching her hair, adjusting her blouse, and emphasising her lightest word with a queenly gesture of the left hand, so that wherever Millie looked she saw the diamond flash.
“Stop showing off with your rubbishing bit of glass!” she screamed, at last.
“Bit of glass, eh? Ha-ha! You Wouldn’t say no to such a bit of glass. What’s the matter, are you jealous, or what?”
“Ha-ha! I should be jealous of a rubbishing bit of a thing like that?”
“Oh yes. We all know. We all know all about that, Millie. We all know all about the rings your young man gives you.”
Trust Lily to be a bitch! Every one of those damnable sisters was a bitch: three of them were born bitches, two had achieved bitchery, and one had had bitchery thrust upon her. They hadto be so in order to survive. They were perpetually feeling one another for a fresh sore spot—which it was never difficult to find—they were sore to the core, those hysterical fools. They enjoyed being hurt: it gave them something to cry about. If, by some miracle, you managed not to hurt them they would tread on their own corns to make themselves scream. They would stop at nothing, to put you in the wrong. Charles Small once saw his Aunt Sarah scraping her eyes with a match-stick in order to draw tears that might wring the heart of his mother with remorse for having hurt Sarah’s feelings by saying that a certain sky-blue woollen jumper “showed off her figure too much”. Sarah had a bosom like a pair of overblown pomegranates, and made the most of it—in the end it got her a tobacconist with three branch shops and a motor-car. But when Millie, who was flat-chested, expressed righteous indignation and virtuous disgust at her pride in these peerless globes, these conspicuous founts of motherhood, Sarah, having said a few never-to-be-forgotten things about “it being better to have a proper figure than something like pimples on your chest” rushed into the kitchen and poked herself in the eye with a match to get in the first weep. What a battle there was then!—complete with forced marches, dark strategies, dirty tactics, espionage, attack, counter-attack, entrenchment, night assaults, sieges and sorties! It lasted three months—in which time Lily and Pearl, having formed a secret alliance, carried a blitzkrieg to Becky because she had said that Ruth was the best cook in the family.
However when Millie remembered Lily’s ring she wanted one like it, which the cobbler Schmulowitz could not afford to buy. He had his eye on a bargain priced at £15—a wretched little cluster of chip-diamonds around a flawed sapphire no bigger than a split pea. Millie had
She did not care whether he came or went, lived or died, but she had told all her friends that he was desperately in love with her. He, for his part, was sick and tired of the whole affair, and she could see it. One syllable, now—one brusque Go might have sent Yisroel Schmulowitz stamping away. Sensing this, she cried, and said, through her tears: “It’s not what you’re called, it’s what you are that counts!”
She had got this out of some novelette, no doubt. It was a little too deep for Schmulowitz, who in any case was powerless in the presence of a weeping woman. He cried himself when he saw a woman shedding tears, thinking of his mother, so this fool, missing a heaven-sent opportunity of giving himself a better wife, and Charles Small a different mother, pulled out a silk handkerchief, saying: “Rollo, Schmollo, Wollo, Bollo, call me what you like!”
“A rose by any other name would smell,” she sobbed.
So they were engaged. He had to give her a ring, of course, but he had very little money to spend. Millie’s youngest sister Lily was married to a prosperous photographer who had given her an engagement ring that cost £85—the whole family had seen the receipt; after which young Lily had acquired a maddening habit of touching her hair, adjusting her blouse, and emphasising her lightest word with a queenly gesture of the left hand, so that wherever Millie looked she saw the diamond flash.
“Stop showing off with your rubbishing bit of glass!” she screamed, at last.
“Bit of glass, eh? Ha-ha! You Wouldn’t say no to such a bit of glass. What’s the matter, are you jealous, or what?”
“Ha-ha! I should be jealous of a rubbishing bit of a thing like that?”
“Oh yes. We all know. We all know all about that, Millie. We all know all about the rings your young man gives you.”
Trust Lily to be a bitch! Every one of those damnable sisters was a bitch: three of them were born bitches, two had achieved bitchery, and one had had bitchery thrust upon her. They hadto be so in order to survive. They were perpetually feeling one another for a fresh sore spot—which it was never difficult to find—they were sore to the core, those hysterical fools. They enjoyed being hurt: it gave them something to cry about. If, by some miracle, you managed not to hurt them they would tread on their own corns to make themselves scream. They would stop at nothing, to put you in the wrong. Charles Small once saw his Aunt Sarah scraping her eyes with a match-stick in order to draw tears that might wring the heart of his mother with remorse for having hurt Sarah’s feelings by saying that a certain sky-blue woollen jumper “showed off her figure too much”. Sarah had a bosom like a pair of overblown pomegranates, and made the most of it—in the end it got her a tobacconist with three branch shops and a motor-car. But when Millie, who was flat-chested, expressed righteous indignation and virtuous disgust at her pride in these peerless globes, these conspicuous founts of motherhood, Sarah, having said a few never-to-be-forgotten things about “it being better to have a proper figure than something like pimples on your chest” rushed into the kitchen and poked herself in the eye with a match to get in the first weep. What a battle there was then!—complete with forced marches, dark strategies, dirty tactics, espionage, attack, counter-attack, entrenchment, night assaults, sieges and sorties! It lasted three months—in which time Lily and Pearl, having formed a secret alliance, carried a blitzkrieg to Becky because she had said that Ruth was the best cook in the family.
However when Millie remembered Lily’s ring she wanted one like it, which the cobbler Schmulowitz could not afford to buy. He had his eye on a bargain priced at £15—a wretched little cluster of chip-diamonds around a flawed sapphire no bigger than a split pea. Millie had
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