Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/120

 116 SHOLOM-ALECHEM

Mazepevke, Eeb Lebish said to himself, "Got him !" and at once came away to compare his watch with the clocks. When he came in to us, he never gave us a "good evening," only glanced up at the clock on the wall, then at his watch, then at the almanac, and was gone !

But it happened one day that when Eeb Lebish came in to compare our clock with the almanac, he gave a shout :

"Sim-cheh ! Make haste ! Where are you ?"

My father came running in terror.

"Ha, what has happened, Eeb Lebish ?"

"Wretch, you dare to ask?" and Eeb Lebish held his watch under my father's nose, pointed at our clock, and shouted again, like a man with a trodden toe :

"Sim-cheh ! Why don't you speak ? It is a minute and a half ahead of the time ! Throw it away !"

My father was vexed. What did Eeb Lebish mean by telling him to throw away his clock?

"Who is to prove," said he, "that my clock is a minute and a half fast ? Perhaps it is the other way about, and your watch is a minute and a half slow? Who is to tell?"

Eeb Lebish stared at him as though he had said that it was possible to have three days of New Moon, or that the Seventeenth of Tammuz might possibly fall on the Eve of Passover, or made some other such wild remark, enough, if one really took it in, to give one an apoplectic fit. Eeb Lebish said never a word, he gave a deep sigh, turned away without wishing us "good evening," slammed the door, and was gone. But no one minded much, because the whole town knew Eeb Lebish for a