Mrs. Kalch
was deep in a game of pinochle in a small ground-floor room that
gave out on the veranda. The window was open and I could hear
Mrs. Kalch's voice. She seemed to have been losing. The little
room, by the way, was used both as a synagogue and a
gambling-room. In the mornings, before breakfast, it was filled
with old men in praying-shawls and phylacteries, while the rest of
the day, until late at night, it was in the possession of card-players
I wanted to wire Bender to send a message to Fanny, in my name,
stating that I had been unavoidably detained in the city, but I
lacked the energy to do so. I had not even the energy to extricate
myself from the attentions of the pretty mother of the homely girl
That charity meeting bothered me more than anything else. One
was apt to impute my absence to meanness. I pictured Kaplan's
disappointment, and I felt like going to Tannersville for his sake,
if for no other reason. The next best thing would have been to
have Bender wire my contribution to each of the two funds.
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