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She was dark-eyed, like Miss Kalmanovitch, but slender and supple and full of life. Everybody called her affectionately by her first name, which was Stella. At the supper-table, in the dining-room, I was placed beside Miss Kalmanovitch, but I gave most of my attention to Stella, who was seated diagonally across the table from us. I felt quite at home now
Temperamentally she reminded me somewhat of Miss Kalmanovitch, but she was the better-looking of the two. I was not in love with her, but she certainly was not repulsive to me "Good holiday, dad! Good holiday, Dave!" she saluted us in Yiddish, throwing out her chest and squaring her shoulders as she reached us
He raised his hand above his head. "She is dead stuck on her, Bella is." Owing to an illness in the Kalmanovitch family, the projected meeting could not take place, but Nodelman's birthday was to be celebrated in March, so the gathering was to serve as a match-making agency as well as a social function The great event came to pass on a Sunday evening.
Nodelman's hoarse voice: "Now Miss Kalmanovitch will oblige us with some music. Won't you, please, Miss Kalmanovitch?" A swarthy, middle-aged woman, with features that somewhat resembled those of the host, whose cousin she was, and with huge golden teeth that glistened good-naturedly, took Miss Kalmanovitch by the arm, saying in a mannish voice: "Come on, Ray! Show them what you can do!"
I was introduced to her mother, a spare, hatchet-face little woman with bad teeth, who looked me over in a most business-like way, and to her father, a gray man with a goatee Miss Kalmanovitch and I soon found ourselves seated side by side.
But I soon discovered that he was mistaken. My appearance produced a sensation, and the telltale glances of the women from me to a large girl with black eyes who stood at the mantelpiece not only showed plainly that they knew all about "it," but also indicated who of the young women present was Miss Kalmanovitch The spacious parlor was literally jammed.
"Oh, you don't like me this evening, Mrs. Nodelman. You are angry witn me. Else you wouldn't talk the way you do." She burst into a laugh, and said, "You're a hell of a fellow, you are." "I know I misbehaved myself, but I couldn't help it. Miss Kalmanovitch is too fat, you know, and her hands perspire so." "She's a charmin' girl," she returned, with a hearty laugh.
Miss Kalmanovitch was banging away with an effect of showing how quickly she could get through the nocturne. I am not musical in the accepted meaning of the term, and in those days I was even less so than I am now, perhaps, but I was always fond of music, and had a discriminating feeling for it. At all events, I knew enough to realize that my would-be fiancée was playing execrably.
"I was gettin' uneasy. Honest I was." And dropping her voice: "Miss Kalmanovitch came on time. She's a good girl. Always." And she gave me a knowing look that brought the color to my face and a coy smile into hers Her husband appeared a minute later. After greeting me warmly he whispered into my ear: "Nobody knows anything about it, not even the young lady. Only her mother does."
"YOU'LL examine the merchandise, and if you don't like it nobody is going to make you buy it," said Nodelman to me one day in January of the following winter. By "merchandise" he meant a Miss Kalmanovitch, the daughter of a wealthy furniture-dealer, to whom I was to be introduced at the Nodelman residence four days later.
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