Peter wheeled up another chair; added some small and large glasses
to the collection on the tray and awaited Jack's return. The
experience was not new. The stupid, illogical prejudice was not
confined to inexperienced lads.
He had had the same thing to contend with dozens of times before.
Even Holker had once said: "Peter, what the devil do you find in
that little shrimp of a Hebrew to interest you? Is he cold that
you warm him, or hungry that you feed him,--or lonely that--"
"Stop right there, Holker! You've said it,--lonely--that's it--
LONELY! That's what made me bring him up the first time he was
ever here. It seemed such a wicked thing to me to have him at one
end of the house--the bottom end, too--crooning over a fire, and I
at the top end crooning over another, when one blaze could warm us
both. So up he came, Holker, and now it is I who am lonely when a
week passes and Isaac does not tap at my door, or I tap at his."
The distinguished architect understood it all a week later when
the new uptown synagogue was being talked of and he was invited to
meet the board, and found to his astonishment that the wise little
man with the big gold spectacles, occupying the chair was none
other than Peter's tailor.
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