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A Little Matter Of Real Estate
by
Eva was absent one morning, and Sadie presented the explanation in a rather dirty envelope:
Dear Miss:
Excuse pliss that Eva Gonarofsky comes not on the school. We was moving und she couldn’t to find her clothes.
Yurs Resptphs,
Her elders,
Nathan Gonorowsky,
Becky Ganurwoski.
“Is Eva going far away?” asked Teacher. “Will she come to this school any more?”
“Teacher, yiss ma’an, sure she comes; she lives now by my house. My uncle he lives by my house, too. Und my aunt.”
“And you’re not angry with your cousin anymore?”
“Teacher, no ma’an; I’m loving mit her. She’s got on now all mine best clothes the while her mamma buys her new. My aunt buys new clothes, too. Und my uncle.”
Sadie reported this shopping epidemic so cheerily that Teacher asked with mild surprise:
“Where are all their old things?”
“Teacher, they’re burned. Und my uncle’s store und his all of goods, und his house und his three sewing machines. All, all burned!”
“Oh, dear me!” said Teacher. “Your poor uncle! Now he can never pay that thousand dollars.”
Sadie regarded Teacher with puzzled eyes.
“Sure he pays. He’s now ‘most as rich like Van’pilt. I guess he’s got a hundred dollers. He pays all right, all right, und my papa had a party over him: he had such a awful glad!”
“Glad on your uncle?” cried Teacher, startled into colloquialisms.
“Yiss ma’an. Und my mamma has a glad on Eva’s mamma, und my gran’ma has a glad on both of papas und both of mammas, und my gran’pa has a glad just like my gran’ma. All, all glad!”
As Teacher walked towards Grand Street that afternoon, she met a radiant little girl with a small and most unsteady boy in tow. She recognized Eva and surmised the cousin whose coldness had hurt her even unto tears.
“Well, Eva, and what little boy is this?” she asked.
And the beaming and transformed Eva answered:
“It’s my little cousin. He’s lovin’ mit me now. Sadie, too, is lovin’. I take him out the while it’s healthy he walks, on’y he ain’t so big und he falls. Say, Teacher, it’s nice when he falls. I holds him in my hands.”
And fall he did. Eva picked him up, greatly to their mutual delight, and explained:
“He’s heavy, und my this here arm ain’t yet so healthy, but I hold him in my hands the while he’s cousins mit me, und over cousins I’m got all times that kind feelin’.”