noon
` Nup . ' ` Then I swear -- on my father 's and mother 's life ! ' Pinchas departed gleefully , not knowing that Kloot was an orphan . On the very verge of Passover , Pinchas , lying in bed at noon with a cigarette in his mouth , was reading his morning paper by candle-light ; for he tenanted one of those innumerable dark rooms which should make New York the photographer 's paradise . The yellow glow illumined his prophetic and unshaven countenance , agitated by grimaces and sniffs , as he critically perused the paragraphs whose Hebrew letters served as the channel for the mongrel Yiddish and American dialect , in which ` congressman , ' ` sweater , ' and such-like crudities of to-day had all the outer Oriental robing of the Old Testament . Suddenly a strange gurgle spluttered through the cigarette smoke . He read the announcement again .