Mr. Levinsky won't even look at an old
woman like me. It's a pretty girl he's fishin' for. Ainchye, Mr.
Levinsky?"
She was middle-aged, with small features inconspicuously traced
in a bulging mass of full-blooded flesh. This was why her
mother-in-law called her "meat-ball face." She had a hoarse voice,
and altogether she might have given me the impression of being
drunk had there not been something pleasing in her hoarseness as
well as in that droll face of hers. That she was American-born was
clear from the way she spoke her unpolished English. Was
Nodelman the henpecked husband that his mother advertised him
to be? I wondered whether the frequency with which his wife used
his first name could be accepted as evidence to the contrary
They had six children: a youth of nineteen named Maurice who
was the image of his father and, having spent two years at college,
was with him in the clothing business; a high-school boy who had
his mother's face and whose name was Sidney--an appellation
very popular among our people as "swell American"; and four
smaller children, the youngest being a little girl of six.
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