sin, Mr. Seiden?" Sternsilver
protested. "Did she got a label on her?"

"Gets fresh yet!" Seiden exclaimed. "Never mind, Sternsilver. If the
learners is _dumm_ it's the foreman's fault; and if you couldn't learn
the learners properly I would got to get another foreman which he could
learn, and that's all there is to it."

He stalked majestically away while Sternsilver turned and gazed at the
unconscious subject of their conversation. As he watched her bending
over her sewing-machine a sense of injustice rankled in his breast, for
there could be no doubt the epithet _dummer Ochs_, as applied to Miss
Saphir, was not only justified but eminently appropriate.

Her wide cheekbones, flat nose, and expressionless eyes suggested at
once the calm, ruminating cow; and there was not even lacking a piece
of chewing-gum between her slowly moving jaws to complete the portrait.

"A girl like her should got rich relations yet," he murmured to
himself. "A _Schnorrer_ wouldn't marry her, not if her uncles was
Rothschilds _oder_ Carnegies. You wouldn't find the mate to her outside
a dairy farm."

As he turned away, however, the sight of Hillel Fatkin wielding a pair
of shears gave him the lie; for, if Miss Bessie Saphir's cheekbones
were broad, Hillel's were broader. In short, Hillel's features compared
to Bessie's as the head of a Texas steer to that of a Jersey heifer.

Sternsilver noticed the resemblance with a smile just as Mr. Seiden
returned to the workroom.

"Sternsilver," he said, "ain't you got nothing better to do that you
should be standing around grinning like a fool? Seemingly you think a
foreman don't got to work at all."

"I was laying out some work for the operators over there, Mr. Seiden,"
Philip replied. "Oncet in a while a feller must got to think, Mr.
Seiden."

"What d'ye mean, think?" Seiden exclaimed. "Who asks you you should
think, Sternsilver? You get all of a sudden such _grossartig_ notions.
'Must got to think,' _sagt er_! I am the only one which does the
thinking here, Sternsilver. Now you go right ahead and tend to them
basters."

Sternsilver retired at once to the far end of the workroom, where he
proceeded to relieve his outraged feeling by criticising Hillel
Fatkin's work in excellent imitation of his employer's bullying manner.

"What is the matter, Mr. Sternsilver, you are all the time picking on
me so?" Hillel demanded. "I am doing my best here and certainly if you
don't like my work I could