Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

HOW ZELIK MISSED OUT ON TWO INHERITANCES 125

Then she hauled in an oak sideboard with curlicues and twisted legs and gleaming locks and statues in the whatnot, and the whole street came to look at this splendid furniture specimen.

Exactly fourteen days later, Aunt Pessie also had her living room emptied. Up to her front door drove an enormous furniture van with six horses, and what did it bring? Also a sideboard. Not any bigger than Aunt Breinie's, but made completely of polished mahogany. She had to have a cleaning woman come one day extra every week just to wax and shine up this magnificent sideboard.

What did Aunt Breinie do then? She bought crystal, a vase and then another vase and a piece de milieu and a crystal dish for small calling cards and another for large calling cards and silver frames for the portraits and porcelain statuettes; and there was too much junk to be taken care of. Of course, Aunt Pessie was also buying crystal vases and dishes and silver frames, until the family agreed they were even again.

But Aunt Pessie was also doing something completely different. What I am now going to tell you, I know you may not believe. But may I never have another healthy hour if one single word of this is a falsehood.

Try to guess what Aunt Pessie was about to do? No, don't waste your time, it just can't be guessed.

Aunt Pessie had some cards made, and on these cards she wrote the prices of the vases and the dishes and the silver frames. Next she placed the cards on her mahogany sideboard. It was a perfect showcase. Everybody could see that the one crystal vase had cost her thirty guilders and that another, a little bigger, had cost her thirty-two fifty.