Thus encouraged, Elkan went home that evening full of a determination to acquire all the antique furniture his apartment would hold; and he and Yetta sat up until past midnight conning the pages of a heavy volume on the subject, which Yetta had procured from the neighbouring public library. Accordingly Elkan rose late the following morning, and it was almost nine o'clock before he reached his office and observed on the very top of his morning mail a slip of paper containing a message in the handwriting of Sam, the office boy.

"A man called about Jacobowitz," it read, and Elkan immediately rang his deskbell.

"What Jacobowitz is this?" he demanded as Sam entered, and the office boy shrugged.

"I should know!" he said.

"What d'ye mean you should know?" Elkan cried. "Ain't I always told it you you should write down always the name when people call?"

"Ain't Jacobowitz a name?" Sam replied. "Furthermore, you couldn't expect me I should get the family history from everybody which is coming in the place, Mr. Lubliner—especially when the feller says he would come back."

"Why didn't you tell me he is coming back?" Elkan asked, and again Sam shrugged.

"When the feller is coming back, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "it don't make no difference if I tell you oder not. He would come back anyhow."

Having thus disposed of the matter to his entire satisfaction, Sam withdrew and banged the door triumphantly behind him, while Elkan fell to examining his mail. He had hardly cut the first envelope, however, when his door opened to admit Dishkes.

"Nu, Dishkes!" Elkan said. "You are pretty early, ain't it?"

Dishkes nodded.

"I'm a Schlemiel, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "and that's all there is to it. Yesterday I went to work and lost my wife's picture."

Elkan slapped his thigh with his hand.

"Well, ain't I a peach?" he said. "I am getting so mixed up with these here antics I completely forgot to tell Yetta anything about it. I didn't even show it to her, Dishkes; so you must leave me have it for a day longer, Dishkes."

As he spoke he drew the cabinet photograph from his breast pocket and handed it to Dishkes, who gazed earnestly at it for a minute. Then, resting his elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands and burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing, whereat Elkan jumped from his seat and passed hurriedly out of the room. As he walked toward the showroom the strains of a popular song came from behind a rack.

"Sam," he bellowed, "who asks you you should whistle round here?"

The whistling ceased and Sam emerged from his hiding-place with a feather brush.

"I could whistle without being asked," Sam replied; "and furthermore, Mr. Lubliner, when I am dusting the samples I must got to whistle; otherwise the dust gets in my lungs, which I value my lungs the same like you do, Mr. Lubliner, even if I would be here only a boy working on stock!"

With this decisive rejoinder he resumed dusting the samples, while Elkan returned to his office, where he found that Dishkes had regained his composure.

* * * * *

Despite the fact that all of Dishkes' creditors save one had signed an extension agreement, the meeting in Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's showroom was well attended; and when Leon Sammet came in, at quarter-past eleven, the assemblage had already elected Charles Finkman, of Maisener & Finkman, as chairman. He had just taken his seat in Philip Scheikowitz's new revolving chair and was in the act of noisily clearing his throat in lieu of pounding the table with a gavel.

"Gentlemen," he said, "first, I want to thank you for the signal honour you are doing me in appointing me your chairman. For sixteen years now my labours in the Independent Order Mattai Aaron ain't unknown to most of you here. Ten years ago, at the national convention held in Sarahcuse, gentlemen, I was unanimously elected by the delegates from sixty lodges to be your National Grand Master; and——"

At this juncture Leon Sammet rose ponderously to his feet.

"Say, Finkman!" retorted Sammet. "What has all this Stuss about the I. O. M. A. got to do mit Dishkes here?"

Again Finkman cleared his throat, and this time he produced a note of challenge that caused the members of the I. O. M. A. there present to lean forward in their seats. They expected a crushing rejoinder and they were not disappointed.

"What is the motto of the I. O. M. A., Sammet?" Finkman thundered. "'Justice, Fraternity and Charity!' And I say to you now that, as chairman of this meeting, as well as Past National Grand Master of that noble order to which you and I both belong, verstehst du, I will see that justice be done, fraternity be encouraged and charity dispensed on each and every occasion.

"Now, my brothers, here is a fellow member of our organization in distress, y'understand; and I ask you one and all this question"—he raised his voice to a pitch that made the filaments tremble in the electric-light bulbs—"Who," he roared, "who will come to his assistance?"

He paused dramatically just as Sam, the office boy, stuck his head in the showroom doorway and rent the silence with his high, piping voice.

"Mr. Lubliner," he said, "the man is here about Jacobowitz."

Elkan flapped his hand wildly, but it was too late to prevent the entrance of no less a person than Jacob Paul—the connoisseur of antiques and fine arts.

"Hello, Finkman!" he said; "what's the trouble here?"

Elkan started from his seat to interrupt his visitor, but there was something in Finkman's manner that made him sit down again.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Paul?" Finkman exclaimed; and the clarion note had deserted his voice, leaving only a slight hoarseness to mark its passing. "What brings you here?"

"I might ask the same of you, Finkman," Jacob Paul replied; and as his keen eyes scanned the assembled company they rested for a minute on Leon Sammet, who forthwith began to perspire.

"The fact is," Finkman began, "this here is a meeting of creditors of Louis Dishkes, of the Villy dee Paris Store on Amsterdam Avenue."

Paul turned to Louis Dishkes, proprietor of the Ville de Paris Store, who sat at the side of the room behind Scheikowitz's desk in an improvised prisoner's dock.

"What's the matter, Dishkes?" Paul asked. "Couldn't you make it go up there?"

Dishkes shrugged hopelessly.

"Next month, when them houses round the corner is rented," he said, "I could do a good business there."

"You ought to," Paul agreed. "You ain't got no competitors, so far as I could see."

"That's what we all think!" Elkan broke in—"that is to say, all of us except Mr. Sammet; and he ain't willing to wait for his money."

Leon Sammet moved uneasily in his chair as Jacob Paul faced about in his direction.

"Why ain't you willing to wait, Sammet?" he asked; and Leon mopped his face with his handkerchief.

"Well, it's like this, Mr. Paul——" he began, but the connoisseur of antiques raised his hand.

"One moment, Sammet," he said. "You know as well as anybody else, and better even, that a millionaire concern like the Hamsuckett Mills must got to wait once in a while." He paused significantly. "If we didn't," he continued, "there's plenty of solvent concerns would be forced to the wall—ain't it? Furthermore, if the Hamsuckett Mills did business the way you want to, Sammet, I wouldn't keep my job as credit man and treasurer very long."

Sammet nodded weakly and plied his handkerchief with more vigour, while Elkan sat and stared at his acquaintance of Sunday night in unfeigned astonishment.

"Then what is the use of talking, Sammet?" Paul said. "So long as you are the only one standing out, why don't you make an end of it? How long an extension does Dishkes want?"

"Two months," Finkman answered.

"And where is the agreement you fellows all signed?" Paul continued.

Elkan took a paper from the desk in front of Dishkes and passed it to Paul, who drew from his waistcoat pocket an opulent gold-mounted fountain pen. Then he walked over to Leon Sammet and handed him the pen and the agreement.

"Schreib, Sammet," he said, "and don't make no more fuss about it."

A moment later Sammet appended a shaky signature to the agreement and returned it, with the pen, to Paul.

A quarter of an hour later Jacob Paul sat in Elkan's office and smoked one of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's best cigars.

"Now I put it up to you, Lubliner," he said: "them Jacobean chairs are pretty high at fifty dollars, but I want 'em, and I'm willing to give you sixty for 'em."

Elkan smiled and made a wide gesture with both hands.

"My dear Mr. Paul," he said, "after what you done to-day for Dishkes I'll make you a present of 'em—free for nothing."

"No, you won't do no such thing," Paul declared; "because I'm going to sell 'em again and at a profit, as I may as well tell you."

"My worries what you are going to do with 'em!" Elkan declared. "But one thing I ain't going to do, Mr. Paul—I ain't going to make no profit on you; so go ahead and take the chairs at what I paid for 'em—and that's the best I could do for you."

It required no further persuasion for Jacob Paul to draw a fifty-dollar check to Elkan's order; and as he rose to leave Elkan pressed his hand warmly.

"Come up and see me, Mr. Paul, when we get through refurnishing," he said. "I promise you you would see a flat furnished to your taste—no crayon portraits nor nothing."

* * * * *

It was late in the afternoon when Elkan's office door opened to admit Sam, the office boy.

"Mr. Lubliner," he said, "another feller is here about this here—now—Jacobowitz."

Elkan glanced through the half-open door and recognized the figure of Ringentaub, the antiquarian.

"Tell him to come in," he said; and a moment later Ringentaub was wringing Elkan's hand and babbling his gratitude for his brother-in-law's deliverance from bankruptcy.

"God will bless you for it, Mr. Lubliner," he said; "and I am ashamed of myself when I think of it. I am a dawg, Mr. Lubliner—and that's all there is to it."

Here he drew a greasy wallet from his breast-pocket and extracted three ten-dollar bills.

"Take 'em, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "and forgive me."

He pressed the bills into Elkan's hand.

"What's this?" Elkan demanded.

"That's the change from your fifty dollars," Ringentaub replied; "because, so help me, Mr. Lubliner, there is first-class material in them chairs and the feller that makes 'em for me is a highgrade cabinetmaker. Then you got to reckon it stands me in a couple of dollars also to get 'em fixed up antique, y'understand; so, if you get them chairs for twenty dollars you are buying a bargain, Mr. Lubliner."

"Why, what d'ye mean?" Elkan cried. "Ain't them chairs gen-wine Jacobean chairs?"

"Not by a whole lot they ain't," Ringentaub declared fervently.

"But Mr. Paul thinks they are!" Elkan exclaimed.

"Sure, I know," Ringentaub answered; "and that shows what a lot a collector knows about such things. Paul is a credit man for the Hamsuckett Mills, Mr. Lubliner; but he collects old furniture on the side."

For a moment Elkan gazed open-mouthed at the antiquarian and a great light began to break in on him.

"So-o-o!" he cried. "That's what you mean by a collector!"

Ringentaub nodded.

"And furthermore, Mr. Lubliner, when collectors knows more about antiques as dealers does, Mr. Lubliner," he said with his hand on the doorknob, "I'll go into the woollen piece-goods business too—which you could take it from me, Mr. Lubliner, it wouldn't be soon, by a hundred years even."

* * * * *

When Elkan emerged from the One-Hundred-and-Sixteenth Street station of the subway that evening a familiar voice hailed him from the rear.

"Nu, Elkan!" cried B. Gans, for it was none other than he. "You made out fine at the meeting this morning—ain't it?"

"Who told you?" Elkan asked as he linked arms with the highgrade manufacturer.

"Never mind who told me," B. Gans said jokingly; "but all I could say is you made a tremendous hit with Jacob Paul, Elkan—and if that ain't no compliment, understand me, I don't know what is. Why, there ain't a better judge of men oder antique furniture in this here city than Paul, Elkan. He's an A-Number-One credit man, too, and I bet yer he gets a big salary from them Hamsuckett Mills people, which the least his income could be—considering what he picks up selling antiques—is fifteen thousand a year."

"Does Paul sell all the antiques he collects?" Elkan asked.

"Does he?" B. Gans rejoined. "Well, I should say he does! Myself I bought from him in the past two weeks half a dozen chairs, understand me—four last week and two to-day—which I am paying him five hundred dollars for the lot. They're worth it, too, Elkan. I never seen finer examples of the period."

"But are you sure they're gen-wine?" Elkan asked as they reached the entrance to his apartment house.

"Paul says they are," B. Gans answered, slapping Elkan's shoulder in farewell; "and if he's mistaken, Elkan, then I'm content that I should be."

Two hours later, however, after Elkan had recounted to Yetta all the incidents of Dishkes' meeting and the resulting sale of the chairs, his conscience smote him.

"What d'ye think, Yetta?" he asked. "Should I tell Paul and Gans the chairs ain't gen-wine, oder not?"

For more than ten minutes Yetta wrinkled her forehead over this knotty ethical point; then she delivered her opinion.

"Mr. Gans tells you he is just as happy if they ain't gen-wine—ain't it?" she said.

Elkan nodded.

"And Mr. Paul acted honest, because he didn't know they wasn't gen-wine neither, ain't it?" she continued.

Again Elkan nodded.

"Then," Yetta declared, "if you are taking it so particular as all that, Elkan, there's only one thing for you to do—give me the thirty dollars!"

"Is that so!" Elkan exclaimed ironically. "And what will you do with the money?"

"The only thing I can do with it, Schlemiel," she said. "Ten dollars I will give Louis Dishkes he should take a trip up to the country over Sunday and visit his wife."

"And what will we do with the other twenty?" Elkan asked.

"We'll send a present with him to Mrs. Dishkes," Yetta concluded with a smile, "and it wouldn't be no antics neither!"



CHAPTER SEVEN

SWEET AND SOUR

ARE THE USES OF COMPETITIVE SALESMANSHIP

"Aber me and Yetta is got it all fixed up we would go to Mrs. Kotlin's already," Elkan Lubliner protested as he mopped his forehead one hot Tuesday morning in July. "The board there is something elegant, Mr. Scheikowitz. Everybody says so."

"Yow! everybody!" Philip Scheikowitz retorted. "Who is everybody, Elkan? A couple drummers like Marks Pasinsky, one or two real estaters, understand me, and the rest of 'em is wives from J to L retailers, third credit, which every time their husbands comes down to spend Sunday with 'em, y'understand, he must pretty near got to pawn the shirt from his back for car fare already."

"Scheikowitz is right, Elkan," Marcus Polatkin joined in. "A feller shouldn't make a god from his stomach, Elkan, especially when money don't figure at all, so if you would be going down to Egremont Beach, understand me, there's only one place you should stay, y'understand, and that's the New Salisbury."

"Which if you wouldn't take our word for it, Elkan," Scheikowitz added, "just give a look here."

He drew from his coat pocket the summer resort section of the previous day's paper and thrust it toward his junior partner, indicating as he did so a half column headed:

MIDSEASON GAIETY AT EGREMONT BEACH

which reads as follows:

The season is in full swing here.

On Saturday night Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Gans gave a Chinese Lantern Dinner in the Hanging Gardens at which were present Mr. and Mrs. Sam Feder, Mr. and Mrs. Max Koblin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Feldman, Mr. Jacob Scharley and Miss Hortense Feldman.

Among those who registered Friday at the New Salisbury were Mr. Jacob Scharley of San Francisco, Mr. and Mrs. Sol Klinger, Mr. Leon Sammet and his mother, Mrs. Leah Sammet.

"I thought that Leon's brother Barney was staying down at Egremont," Polatkin said after he and Elkan had read the item.

"Barney is at Mrs. Kotlin's," Scheikowitz explained, "because mit Leon Sammet, Polatkin, nothing is too rotten for Barney to stay at, and besides he thinks Barney would get a little small business there, which the way Sammet Brothers figures, understand me, if they could stick a feller with three bills of goods for a couple hundred dollars apiece, y'understand, so long as he pays up on the first two, he couldn't eat up their profits if he would bust up on 'em mit the third."

"Sure I know," Elkan said, "aber I ain't going down to Egremont for business, Mr. Scheikowitz, I'm going because it ain't so warm down there."

"Schmooes, Elkan!" Scheikowitz retorted. "It wouldn't make it not one degrees warmer in Egremont supposing you could get a couple new accounts down there."

"B. Gans don't take it so particular about the weather," Polatkin commented. "I bet yer he would a whole lot sooner take off his coat and shirt and spiel a little auction pinocle mit Sol Klinger and Leon Sammet and all them fellers as be giving dinners already in a tuxedo suit to Sam Feder. I bet yer he gets a fine accommodation from the Kosciusko Bank out of that dinner yet."

"The other people also he ain't schencking no dinners to 'em for nothing neither," Scheikowitz declared. "Every one of 'em means something to B. Gans, I bet yer."

Elkan nodded.

"Particularly Scharley," he said.

"What d'ye mean, particularly Scharley?" Polatkin and Scheikowitz inquired with one voice.

"Why, ain't you heard about Scharley?" Elkan asked. "It's right there in the Daily Cloak and Suit Journal."

He indicated the front sheet of that newsy trade paper, where under the heading of "Incorporations" appeared the following item:

The Scharley, Oderburg Drygoods Company, San Francisco, Cal., has filed articles of incorporation, giving its capital stock as $500,000, and expects to open its new store in September next.

"And you are talking about staying by Mrs. Kotlin's!" Scheikowitz exclaimed in injured tones. "You should ought to be ashamed of yourself, Elkan."

Elkan received his senior partner's upbraiding with a patient smile.

"What show do we stand against a concern like B. Gans?" he asked.

"B. Gans sells him only highgrade goods, Elkan," Scheikowitz declared. "I bet yer the least the feller buys is for twenty thousand dollars garments here, and a good half would be popular price lines, which if we would get busy, we stand an elegant show there, Elkan."

"You should ought to go down there to-morrow yet," Polatkin cried, "because the first thing you know Leon Sammet would entertain him mit oitermobiles yet, and Sol Klinger gets also busy, understand me, and the consequences is we wouldn't be in it at all."

"Next Saturday is the earliest Yetta could get ready," Elkan replied positively, and Polatkin strode up and down the floor in an access of despair.

"All right, Elkan," he said, "if you want to let such an opportunity slip down your fingers, y'understand, all right. Aber if I would be you, Elkan, I would go down there to-night yet."

Elkan shrugged his shoulders.

"I couldn't get Yetta she should close up the flat under the very least two days, Mr. Polatkin," he said. "She must got to fix everything just right, mit moth-camphor and Gott weisst was nach, otherwise she wouldn't go at all. The rugs alone takes a whole day to fix."

"Do as you like, Elkan," Polatkin declared, "aber you mark my words, if Leon Sammet ain't shoving heaven and earth right now, y'understand, I don't know nothing about the garment business at all."

In fulfilment of this prophecy, when Elkan entered his office the following morning Polatkin waved in his face a copy of the morning paper.

"Well," he said, "what did I told you, Elkan?"

Scheikowitz nodded slowly.

"My partner is right, Elkan," he added, "so stubborn you are."

"What's the matter now?" Elkan asked, and for answer Polatkin handed him the paper with his thumb pressed against a paragraph as follows:

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Feder, Mr. and Mrs. Max Koblin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Feldman, Miss Hortense Feldman, and Mr. Jacob Scharley were guests of Mr. Leon Sammet at a Chinese Lantern Dinner this evening given in the Hanging Gardens of the New Salisbury.

"I thought it would be at the least an oitermobile ride," Polatkin said in melancholy tones, "but with that sucker all he could do is stealing a competitor's idees. B. Gans gives Scharley a dinner and Leon Sammet is got to do it, too, mit the same guests and everything."

"Even to Feldman's sister already," Scheikowitz added, "which it must be that Feldman is trying to marry her off to Scharley even if he would be a widower mit two sons in college. She's a highly educated young lady, too."

"Young she ain't no longer," Polatkin interrupted, "and if a girl couldn't cook even a pertater, understand me, it don't make no difference if she couldn't cook it in six languages, y'understand, Feldman would got a hard job marrying her off anyhow."

Scheikowitz made an impatient gesture with both hands, suggestive of a dog swimming.

"That's neither here or there, Polatkin," he said. "The point is Elkan should go right uptown and geschwind pack his grip and be down at the Salisbury this afternoon yet, if Yetta would be ready oder not. We couldn't afford to let the ground grow under our feet and that's all there is to it."

Thus, shortly after six o'clock that evening, Elkan and Yetta alighted from the 5:10 special from Flatbush Avenue and picked their way through a marital throng that kissed and embraced with as much ardour as though the reunion had concluded a parting of ten years instead of ten hours. At length the happy couples dragged themselves apart and crowded into the automobile 'bus of the New Salisbury, sweeping Elkan and Yetta before them, so that when the 'bus arrived at the hotel Elkan and Yetta were the last to descend.

A burly yellow-faced porter seized the baggage with the contemptuous manner that Ham nowadays evinces toward Shem, and Elkan and Yetta followed him through the luxurious social hall to the desk. There the room clerk immediately shot out a three-carat diamond ring, and when Elkan's eyes became accustomed to the glare he saw that beneath it was a fat white hand extended in cordial greeting.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Williams," Elkan cried, as he shook hands fervently. "Ain't you in the Pitt House, Sarahcuse, no more?"

"I'm taking a short vacation in a sensible manner, Mr. Lubliner," Mr. Williams replied in the rounded tones that only truly great actors, clergymen, and room clerks possess. "Which means that I am interested in a real-estate development near here, and I'm combining business with pleasure for a couple of months."

Elkan nodded admiringly.

"You got the right idee, Mr. Williams," he said. "This is my wife, Mr. Williams."

The room clerk acknowledged the introduction with a bow that combined the grace of Paderewski and the dignity of Prince Florizel in just the right proportions.

"Delighted to know you, Madame," he declared. "Have you made reservations, Mr. Lubliner?"

Elkan shook his head and after an exchange of confidential murmurs Mr. Williams assigned them a room with an ocean view, from which they emerged less than half an hour later to await on the veranda the welcome sound of the dinner gong. A buzz of animated conversation filled the air, above which rose a little shriek of welcome as Mrs. Gans rushed toward Yetta with outstretched hands.

"Why, hello, Yetta!" she cried. "I didn't know you was coming down here."

They exchanged the kiss of utter peace that persists between the kin of highgrade and popular-priced manufacturers.

"I read about you in the newspapers," Yetta said, as they seated themselves in adjoining rockers, and Mrs. Gans flashed all the gems of her right hand in a gesture of deprecation.

"I tell you," she said, "it makes me sick here the way people carries on. Honestly, Yetta, I don't see Barney only at meals and when he's getting dressed. Everything is Mister Scharley, Mister Scharley. You would think he was H. P. Morgan oder the Czar of Russland from the fuss everybody makes over him."

Yetta nodded in sympathy and suddenly Mrs. Gans clutched the arm of her chair.

"There he is now," she hissed.

"Where?" Yetta asked, and Mrs. Gans nodded toward a doorway at the end of the veranda, on which in electric bulbs was outlined the legend, "Hanging Gardens." Yetta descried a short, stout personage between fifty and sixty years of age, arrayed in a white flannel suit of which the coat and waistcoat were cut in imitation of an informal evening costume. On his arm there drooped a lady no longer in her twenties, and from the V-shaped opening in the rear of her dinner gown a medical student could have distinguished with more or less certainty the bones of the cervical vertebrae, the right and left scapula and the articulation of each with the humerus and clavicle.

"That's Miss Feldman," Mrs. Gans whispered. "She's refined like anything, Yetta, and she talks French better as a waiter already."

At this juncture the dinner gong sounded and Yetta rejoined Elkan in the social hall.

"What is the trouble you are looking so rachmonos, Elkan?" she asked as she pressed his arm consolingly.

"To-night it's Sol Klinger," Elkan replied. "He's got a dinner on in the Hanging Gardens for Scharley, Yetta, and I guess I wouldn't get a look-in even."

"You've got six weeks before you," Yetta assured him, "and you shouldn't worry. Something is bound to turn up, ain't it?"

She gave his arm another little caress and they proceeded immediately to the dining room, where the string orchestra and the small talk of two hundred and fifty guests strove vainly for the ascendency in one maddening cacophony. It was nearly eight o'clock before Elkan and Yetta arose from the table and repaired to the veranda whose rockers were filled with a chattering throng.

"Let's get out of this," Elkan said, and they descended the veranda steps to the sidewalk. Five minutes later they were seated on a remote bench of the boardwalk, and until nine o'clock they watched the beauty of the moon and sea, which is constant even at Egremont Beach. When they rose to go Yetta noticed for the first time a shawl-clad figure on the adjacent bench, and immediately a pair of keen eyes flashed from a face whose plump contentment was framed in a jet black wig of an early Victorian design.

* * * * *

"Why, if it ain't Mrs. Lesengeld," Yetta exclaimed and the next moment she enfolded the little woman in a cordial embrace.

"You grown a bisschen fat, Yetta," Mrs. Lesengeld said. "I wouldn't knew you at all, if you ain't speaking to me first."

"This is my husband, Mrs. Lesengeld—Mr. Lubliner," Yetta went on. "He heard me talk often from you, Mrs. Lesengeld, and what a time you got it learning me I should speak English yet."

Elkan beamed at Mrs. Lesengeld.

"And not only that," he said, "but also how good to her you was when she was sick already. There ain't many boarding-house ladies like you, Mrs. Lesengeld."

"And there ain't so many boarders like Yetta, neither," Mrs. Lesengeld retorted.

"And do you got a boarding-house down here, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Yetta asked.

"I've gone out of the boarding-house business," Mrs. Lesengeld replied, "which you know what a trouble I got it mit that lowlife Lesengeld, olav hasholom, after he failed in the pants business, how I am working my fingers to the bones already keeping up his insurings in the I. O. M. A. and a couple thousand dollars in a company already."

Yetta nodded.

"Which I got my reward at last," Mrs. Lesengeld concluded. "Quick diabetes, Yetta, and so I bought for ten thousand dollars a mortgage, understand me, and my son-in-law allows me also four dollars a week which I got it a whole lot easier nowadays."

"And are you staying down here?" Elkan asked.

"Me, I got for twenty dollars a month a little house mit two rooms only, right on the sea, which they call it there Bognor Park. You must come over and see us, Yetta. Such a gemuetlich little house we got it you wouldn't believe at all, and every Sunday my daughter Fannie and my son-in-law comes down and stays with us."

"And are you going all the way home alone?" Elkan asked anxiously.

"Fannie is staying down with me to-night. She meets me on the corner of the Boulevard, where the car stops, at ten o'clock already," Mrs. Lesengeld replied.

"Then you must got to come right along with us," Elkan said, "and we'll see you would get there on time."

"Where are you going?" Mrs. Lesengeld asked.

"Over to the Salisbury," Elkan answered, and Mrs. Lesengeld sank back on to the bench.

"Geh weg, Mr. Lubliner," she cried. "I am now fifty years old and I was never in such a place in my life, especially which under this shawl I got only a plain cotton dress yet."

Elkan flapped his hand reassuringly.

"A fine-looking lady like you, Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, as he seized her hands and drew her gently to her feet, "looks well in anything."

"And you'll have a water ice in the Hanging Gardens with us," Yetta persisted as she slipped a hand under Mrs. Lesengeld's shawl and pressed her arm affectionately. Ten minutes later they arrived at the stoop of the New Salisbury, to the scandalization and horror of the three score A to F first credit manufacturers and their wives. Moreover, approximately a hundred and fifty karats of blue white diamonds rose and fell indignantly on the bosoms of twenty or thirty credit-high retailers' wives, when the little, toilworn woman with her shawl and ritualistic wig entered the Hanging Gardens chatting pleasantly with Elkan and Yetta; and as they seated themselves at a table the buzz of conversation hushed into silence and then roared out anew with an accompaniment of titters.

At the next table Sol Klinger plied with liquors and cigars the surviving guests of his dinner, and when Elkan nodded to him, he ignored the salutation with a blank stare. He raged inwardly, not so much at Elkan's invasion of that fashionable precinct as at the circumstance that his guest of honour had departed with Miss Feldman for a stroll on the boardwalk some ten minutes previously, and he was therefore unable to profit by Elkan's faux pas.

"The feller ain't got no manners at all," he said to Max Koblin, who nodded gloomily.

"It's getting terrible mixed down here, Sol," Max commented as he hiccoughed away a slight flatulency. "Honestly if you want to be in striking distance of your business, Sol, so's you could come in and out every day, you got to rub shoulders with everybody, ain't it?"

He soothed his outraged sensibilities with a great cloud of smoke that drifted over Elkan's table, and Mrs. Lesengeld broke into a fit of coughing which caused a repetition of the titters.

"And do you still make that brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Yetta asked by way of putting the old lady at her ease.

"Make it!" Mrs. Lesengeld answered. "I should say I do. Why you wouldn't believe the way my son-in-law is crazy about it. We got it every Sunday regular, and I tell you what I would do, Yetta."

She laid her hand on Yetta's arm and her face broke into a thousand tiny wrinkles of hospitality.

"You should come Friday to lunch sure," she declared, "and we would got some brown stewed fish sweet and sour and a good plate of Bortch to begin with."

Sol Klinger had been leaning back in his chair in an effort to overhear their conversation, and at this announcement he broke into a broad guffaw, which ran around the table after he had related the cause of it to his guests. Indeed, so much did Sol relish the joke that with it he entertained the occupants of about a dozen seats in the smoking car of the 8:04 express the next morning, and he was so full of it when he entered Hammersmith's Restaurant the following noon that he could not forego the pleasure of visiting Marcus Polatkin's table and relating it to Polatkin himself.

Polatkin heard him through without a smile and when at its conclusion Klinger broke into a hysterical appreciation of his own humour, Polatkin shrugged.

"I suppose, Klinger," he said, "your poor mother, olav hasholom, didn't wear a sheitel neither, ain't it?"

"My mother, olav hasholom, would got more sense as to butt in to a place like that," Klinger retorted.

"Even if you wouldn't of been ashamed to have taken her there, Klinger," he added.

Klinger flushed angrily.

"That ain't here or there, Polatkin," he said. "You should ought to put your partner wise, Polatkin, that he shouldn't go dragging in an old Bube into a place like the Salisbury and talking such nonsense like brown stewed fish sweet and sour."

He broke into another laugh at the recollection of it—a laugh that was louder but hardly as unforced as the first one.

"What's the matter mit brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Klinger?" Polatkin asked. "I eat already a lot of a-la's and en cazzerolls in a whole lot of places just so grossartig as the Salisbury, understand me, and I would schenck you a million of 'em for one plate of brown stewed fish sweet and sour like your mother made it from zu Hause yet."

"But what for an interest does a merchant like Scharley got to hear such things," Klinger protested lamely. "Honestly, I was ashamed for your partner's sake to hear such a talk going on there."

"Did Scharley got any objections?" Polatkin asked.

"Fortunately the feller had gone away from the table," Klinger replied, "so he didn't hear it at all."

"Well," Polatkin declared, taking up his knife and fork as a signal that the matter was closed, "ask him and see if he wouldn't a whole lot sooner eat some good brown stewed fish sweet and sour as a Chinese Lantern Dinner—whatever for a bunch of poison that might be, Klinger—and don't you forget it."

Nevertheless when Polatkin returned to his place of business he proceeded at once to Elkan's office.

"Say, lookyhere Elkan," he demanded, "what is all this I hear about you and Yetta taking an old Bube into the Hanging Gardens already, and making from her laughing stocks out of the whole place."

Elkan looked up calmly.

"It's a free country, Mr. Polatkin," he said, "and so long as I pay my board mit U. S. money, already I would take in there any of my friends I would please."

"Sure, I know," Polatkin expostulated, "but I seen Klinger around at Hammersmith's and he says——"

"Klinger!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, you could say to Klinger for me, Mr. Polatkin, that if he don't like the way I am acting around there, understand me, he should just got the nerve to tell it me to my face yet."

Polatkin flapped the air with his right hand.

"Never mind Klinger, Elkan," he said. "You got to consider you shouldn't make a fool of yourself before Scharley and all them people. How do you expect you should get such a merchant as Scharley he should accept from you entertainment like a Chinese Lantern Dinner, if you are acting that way?"

"Chinese Lantern Dinner be damned!" Elkan retorted. "When we got the right goods at the right price, Mr. Polatkin, why should we got to give a merchant dinners yet to convince him of it?"

"Dinners is nothing, Elkan," Polatkin interrupted with a wave of his hand. "You got to give him dyspepsha even, the way business is nowadays."

"Aber I was talking to the room clerk last night," Elkan went on, "and he tells me so sure as you are standing there, Mr. Polatkin, a Chinese Lantern Dinner would stand us in twenty dollars a head."

"Twenty dollars a head!" Polatkin exclaimed and indulged himself in a low whistle.

"So even if I would be staying at the Salisbury, understand me," Elkan said, "I ain't going to throw away our money out of the window exactly."

"Aber how are you going to get the feller down here, if you wouldn't entertain him or something?"

Elkan slapped his chest with a great show of confidence.

"Leave that to me, Mr. Polatkin," he said, and put on his hat preparatory to going out to lunch.

Nevertheless when he descended from his room at the New Salisbury that evening and prepared to take a turn on the boardwalk before dinner, his confidence evaporated at the coolness of his reception by the assembled guests of the hotel. Leon Sammet cut him dead, and even B. Gans greeted him with half jovial reproach.

"Well, Elkan," he said, "going to entertain any more fromme Leute in the Garden to-night?"

"Seemingly, Mr. Gans," Elkan said, "it was a big shock to everybody here to see for the first time an old lady wearing a sheitel. I suppose nobody here never seen it before, ain't it?"

B. Gans put a fatherly hand on Elkan's shoulder.

"I'll tell yer, Elkan," he said, "if I would be such a rosher, understand me, that I would hold it against you because you ain't forgetting an old friend, like this here lady must be, y'understand, I should never sell a dollar's worth more goods so long as I live, aber if Klinger and Sammet would start kidding you in front of Scharley, understand me, it would look bad."

"Why would it look bad, Mr. Gans?" Elkan broke in.

"Because it don't do nobody no good to have funny stories told about 'em, except an actor oder a politician, Elkan," Gans replied as the dinner gong began to sound, "which if a customer wouldn't take you seriously, he wouldn't take your goods seriously neither, Elkan, and that's all there is to it."

He smiled reassuringly as he walked toward the dining room and left Elkan a prey to most uncomfortable reflections, which did not abate when he overheard Klinger and Sammet hail Gans at the end of the veranda.

"Well, Mr. Gans," Klinger said with a sidelong glance at Elkan, "what are you going to eat to-night—brown stewed fish sweet und sour?"

Elkan could not distinguish B. Gans' reply, but he scowled fiercely at the trio as they entered the hotel lobby, and he still frowned as he sauntered stolidly after them to await Yetta in the social hall.

"What's the matter, Mr. Lubliner," the room clerk asked when Elkan passed the desk. "Aren't you feeling well to-day?"

"I feel all right, Mr. Williams," Elkan replied, "but this here place is getting on my nerves. It's too much like a big hotel out on the road somewheres. Everybody looks like they would got something to sell, understand me, and was doing their level best to sell it."

"You're quite right, Mr. Lubliner," the clerk commented, "and that's the reason why I came down here. In fact," he added with a guilty smile, "I made a date to show some of my lots to-morrow to a prospective customer."

At this juncture a porter appeared bearing a basket of champagne and followed by two waiters with ice buckets, and the room clerk jerked his head sideways in the direction toward which the little procession had disappeared.

"That's for Suite 27, the Feldmans' rooms," he explained. "Miss Feldman is giving a little chafing-dish dinner there to Mr. Scharley and a few friends."

He accepted with a graceful nod Elkan's proffered cigar.

"Which goes to show that it's as you say, Mr. Lubliner," he concluded. "If you have drygoods, real estate or marriageable relatives to dispose of, Mr. Lubliner, Egremont's the place to market them."

* * * * *

"Yes, Mr. Williams," said Jacob Scharley at two o'clock the following afternoon as they trudged along the sands of Bognor Park, one of Egremont Beach's new developments, "I was trying to figure out how these here Chinese Lantern Dinners stands in a sucker like Leon Sammet twenty dollars a head, when by the regular bill of fare it comes exactly to seven dollars and fifty cents including drinks."

"You can't figure on a special dinner according to the prices on the regular bill of fare," said Mr. Williams, the room clerk, who in his quality of real-estate operator was attempting to shift the conversation from hotel matters to the topic of seaside lots. "Why, ice cream is twenty-five cents on the bill of fare, but at one of those dinners it's served in imitation Chinese lanterns, which makes it worth double at least."

"For my part," Scharley broke in, "they could serve it in kerosene lamps, Mr. Williams, because I never touch the stuff."

"It's a parallel case to lots here and lots on Mizzentop Beach, which is the next beach below," Williams continued. "Here we have a boardwalk extending right down to our property, and we are getting seven hundred and fifty dollars a lot, while there, with practically the same transit facilities but no boardwalk or electric lights, they get only four hundred and——"

"Aber you take a piece of tenderloin steak a half an inch thick and about the size of a price ticket, understand me," Scharley interrupted, "and even if you would fix it up with half a cent's worth of peas and spill on it a bottle cough medicine and glue, verstehst du mich, how could you make it figure up more as a dollar and a quarter, Mr. Williams? Then the clams, Mr. Williams, must got to have inside of 'em at the very least a half a karat pink pearl in 'em, otherwise thirty-five cents would be big yet."

"Very likely," Mr. Williams agreed as a shade of annoyance passed over his well modelled features, "but just now, Mr. Scharley, I'm anxious to show you the advantage of these lots of ours, and you won't mind if I don't pursue the topic of Chinese Lantern Dinners any farther."

"I'm only too glad not to talk about it at all," Scharley agreed. "In fact if any one else tries to ring in another one of them dinners on me, Mr. Williams, I'll turn him down on the spot. Shaving-dish parties neither, which I assure you, Mr. Williams, even if Miss Feldman would be an elegant, refined young lady, understand me, she fixes something in that shaving dish of hers last night, understand me, which I thought I was poisoned already."

Williams deemed it best to ignore this observation and therefore made no comment.

"But anyhow," Scharley concluded as they approached a little wooden shack on the margin of the water, "I'm sick and tired of things to eat, so let's talk about something else."

Having delivered this ultimatum, his footsteps lagged and he stopped short as he began to sniff the air like a hunting dog.

"M-m-m-m!" he exclaimed. "What is that?"

"That's a two-room shed we rent for twenty dollars a month," Williams explained. "We have eight of them and they help considerably to pay our office rent over in New York."

"Sure I know," Scharley agreed, "aber, m-m-m-m!"

Once more he expanded his nostrils to catch a delicious fragrance that emanated from the little shack.

"Aber, who lives there?" he insisted, and Mr. Williams could not restrain a laugh.

"Why, it's that old lady with the wig that Lubliner brought over to the hotel the other night," he replied. "I thought I saw Sol Klinger telling you about it yesterday."

"He started to tell me something about it," Scharley said, "when Barney Gans butted in and wouldn't let him. What was it about this here old lady?"

"There isn't anything to it particularly," Williams replied, "excepting that it seemed a little strange to see an old lady in a shawl and one of those religious wigs in the Hanging Gardens, and there was something else Klinger told me about Mrs. Lubliner and the old lady talking about brown stewed fish sweet and——"

At this juncture Scharley snapped his fingers excitedly.

"Brown stewed fish sweet and sour!" he almost shouted. "I ain't smelled it since I was a boy already."

He wagged his head and again murmured, "M-m-m-m-m!"

Suddenly he received an inspiration.

"How much did you say them shanties rents for, Mr. Williams?" he said.

"Twenty dollars a month," Williams replied.

"You don't tell me!" Scharley exclaimed solemnly. "I wonder if I could give a look at the inside of one of 'em—this one here, for instance."

"I don't think there'd be any objection," Williams said, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Scharley started off on a half trot for the miniature veranda on the ocean side of the little house.

"Perhaps I'd better inquire first if it's convenient for them to let us in now," Williams said, as he bounded after his prospective customer and knocked gently on the doorjamb. There was a sound of scurrying feet within, and at length the door was opened a few inches and the bewigged head of Mrs. Lesengeld appeared in the crack.

"Nu," she said, "what is it?"

"I represent the Bognor Park Company," Williams replied, "and if it's perfectly convenient for you, Mrs.——"

"Lesengeld," she added.

"Used to was Lesengeld & Schein in the pants business?" Scharley asked, and Mrs. Lesengeld nodded.

"Why, Lesengeld and me was lodge brothers together in the I. O. M. A. before I went out to the Pacific Coast years ago already," Scharley declared. "I guess he's often spoken to you about Jake Scharley, ain't it?"

"Maybe he did, Mr. Scharley, aber he's dead schon two years since already," Mrs. Lesengeld said, and then added the pious hope, "olav hasholom."

"You don't say so," Scharley cried in shocked accents. "Why, he wasn't no older as me already."

"Fifty-three when he died," Mrs. Lesengeld said. "Quick diabetes, Mr. Scharley. Wouldn't you step inside?"

Scharley and Williams passed into the front room, which was used as a living room and presented an appearance of remarkable neatness and order. In the corner stood an oil stove on which two saucepans bubbled and steamed, and as Mrs. Lesengeld turned to follow her visitors one of the saucepans boiled over.

"Oo-ee!" she exclaimed. "Mein fisch."

"Go ahead and tend to it," Scharley cried excitedly; "don't mind us. It might get burned already."

He watched her anxiously while she turned down the flame.

"Brown stewed fish sweet and sour, ain't it?" he asked, and Mrs. Lesengeld nodded as she lowered the flame to just the proper height.

"I thought it was," Scharley continued. "I ain't smelled it in forty years already. My poor mother, olav hasholom, used to fix it something elegant."

He heaved a sigh as he sat down on a nearby campstool.

"This smells just like it," he added. In front of the window a table had been placed, spread with a spotless white cloth and laid for two persons, and Scharley glanced at it hastily and turned his head away.

"Forty years ago come next Shevuos I ain't tasted it already," he concluded.

Mrs. Lesengeld coloured slightly and clutched at her apron in an agony of embarrassment.

"The fact is we only got three knives and forks," she said, "otherwise there is plenty fish for everybody."

"Why, we just had our lunch at the hotel before we started," Mr. Williams said.

"You did," Scharley corrected him reproachfully, "aber I ain't hardly touched a thing since last night. That shaving-dish party pretty near killed me, already."

"Well, then, we got just enough knives and forks," Mrs. Lesengeld cried. "Do you like maybe also Bortch, Mr. Scharley?"

"Bortch!" Mr. Scharley exclaimed, and his voice trembled with excitement. "Do you mean a sort of soup mit beets and—and—all that?"

"That's it," Mrs. Lesengeld replied, and Scharley nodded his head slowly.

"Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, "would you believe me, it's so long since I tasted that stuff I didn't remember such a thing exists even."

"And do you like it?" Mrs. Lesengeld repeated.

"Do I like it!" Scharley cried. "Um Gottes Willen, Mrs. Lesengeld, I love it."

"Then sit right down," she said heartily. "Everything is ready."

"If you don't mind, Mr. Scharley," Williams interrupted, "I'll wait for you at the office of the company. It's only a couple of hundred yards down the beach."

"Go as far as you like, Mr. Williams," Scharley said as he tucked a napkin between his collar and chin. "I'll be there when I get through."

After Mrs. Lesengeld had ushered out Mr. Williams, she proceeded to the door of the rear room and knocked vigorously.

"Don't be foolish, Yetta, and come on out," she called. "It ain't nobody but an old friend of my husband's."

A moment later Yetta entered the room, and Scharley scrambled to his feet, a knife grasped firmly in one hand, and bobbed his head cordially.

"Pleased to meetcher," he said.

"This is Mrs. Lubliner, Mr. Scharley," Mrs. Lesengeld said.

"Don't make no difference, Mrs. Lesengeld," Scharley assured her, "any friend of yours is a friend of mine, so you should sit right down, Mrs. Lubliner, on account we are all ready to begin."

Then followed a moment of breathless silence while Mrs. Lesengeld dished up the beetroot soup, and when she placed a steaming bowlful in front of Scharley he immediately plunged his spoon into it. A moment later he lifted his eyes to the ceiling.

"Oo-ee!" he exclaimed. "What an elegant soup!"

Mrs. Lesengeld blushed, and after the fashion of a cordon bleu the world over, she began to decry her own handiwork.

"It should ought to got just a Bisschen more pepper into it," she murmured.

"Oser a Stueck," Scharley declared solemnly, as he consumed the contents of his bowl in great gurgling inhalations. "There's only one thing I got to say against it."

He scraped his bowl clean and handed it to Mrs. Lesengeld.

"And that is," he concluded, "that it makes me eat so much of it, understand me, I'm scared I wouldn't got no room for the brown stewed fish."

Again he emptied the bowl, and at last the moment arrived when the brown stewed fish smoked upon the table. Mrs. Lesengeld helped Scharley to a heaping plateful, and both she and Yetta watched him intently, as with the deftness of a Japanese juggler he balanced approximately a half pound of the succulent fish on the end of his fork. For nearly a minute he blew on it, and when it reached an edible temperature he opened wide his mouth and thrust the fork load home. Slowly and with great smacking of his moist lips he chewed away, and then his eyes closed and he laid down his knife and fork.

"Gan-eden!" he declared as he reached across the table and shook hands with Mrs. Lesengeld.

"Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, "my mother olav hasholom was a good cook, understand me, aber you are a good cook, Mrs. Lesengeld, and that's all there is to it."

Forthwith he resumed his knife and fork, and with only two pauses for the necessary replenishments, he polished off three platefuls of the fish, after which he heaved a great sigh of contentment, and as a prelude to conversation he lit one of B. Gans' choicest cigars.

"There's some dessert coming," Mrs. Lesengeld said.

"Dessert after this, Mrs. Lesengeld," he replied, through clouds of contented smoke, "would be a sacrilege, ain't it?"

"That's something I couldn't make at all," Mrs. Lesengeld admitted. "All I got it here is some frimsel kugel."

"Frimsel kugel!" Scharley exclaimed, laying down his cigar. "Why ain't you told me that before?"

A quarter of an hour later he again lighted his cigar, and this time he settled back in his campstool for conversation, while Mrs. Lesengeld busied herself about the oil stove. Instantly, however, he straightened up as another and more delicious odour assailed his nostrils, for Mrs. Lesengeld made coffee by a mysterious process, that conserved in the flavour of the decoction the delicious fragrance of the freshly ground bean.

"And are you staying down here with Mrs. Lesengeld?" Scharley asked Yetta after he had finished his third cup.

"In this little place here?" Mrs. Lesengeld cried indignantly. "Well, I should say not. She's stopping at the Salisbury, ain't you, Yetta?"

Yetta nodded and sighed.

"It ain't so comfortable as here," she said.

"I bet yer," Scharley added fervently. "I am stopping there too, and them Chinese Lantern Dinners which they are putting up!"

He waved his hand eloquently.

"Poison ain't no word for it, Missus Er——" he concluded lamely as he tried to remember Yetta's name, which after so much soup, fish and coffee had completely escaped him.

"Lubliner," Yetta said. "I guess you know my husband, Mr. Scharley, Elkan Lubliner of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company."

Scharley struck the table with his open hand.

"Zoitenly, I do," he cried. "Why, he is the feller which Sol Klinger is telling me about."

Yetta coloured slightly and bit her lips.

"What did he tell you about him?" she asked.

"Why," Scharley said, drawing vigorously on his imagination, "he says to me what a bright young feller he is and——"

Here he reflected that in a highly competitive trade like the cloak and suit business this statement sounded a trifle exaggerated.

"And," he went on hurriedly, "he told me how he saw you and him with Mrs. Lesengeld up at the hotel the other evening, and I says, 'What,' I says, 'you don't mean Mrs. Lesengeld whose husband used to was in the pants business?' and he said he didn't know, 'because,' I says, 'if that's the same party,' I says, 'I would like for her to come up to the hotel and take dinner with me some time,' I says."

He smiled cordially at Mrs. Lesengeld.

"And I hope you will," he concluded earnestly, "to-morrow night sure."

Mrs. Lesengeld shook her head.

"I ain't fixed to go to no swell hotel," she demurred. "I ain't got no clothes nor nothing."

"What do you care about clothes, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Scharley protested.

"And besides," Yetta said with sudden inspiration, "we could get up a little chafing-dish dinner in our room, ain't it?"

"For that matter we could do it in my room," Scharley cried, as there sounded a vigorous knocking on the outside of the door leading to the veranda, and a moment later Williams entered.

"Excuse me, Mr. Scharley," he said, "but I have to be getting back to the hotel and if you're quite through we'll go and look at that map of the lots down in the office."

Scharley waved his hand airily.

"Sit down, Mr. Williams," he said, "and drink the cup of coffee of your life."

He handed the room clerk a cigar.

"I could promise you one thing, Mr. Williams," he went on, "I got a great idee of buying some lots here and building a little house on 'em, gemuetlich just like this, and if I do, Williams, I would take them lots from you for certain sure. Only one thing, Williams, I want you to do me for a favour."

He paused and puffed carefully on his cigar.

"I want you to pick me out a couple good vacant rooms on the top floor of the Salisbury for Saturday night," he said, "where I could give a shaving-dish party, so if any of the guests of the hotel objects, understand me, they wouldn't get the smell of the Bortch, coffee, and brown stewed fish sweet and sour."

* * * * *

On the following Wednesday afternoon Elkan sat at his desk, while Marcus Polatkin and Philip Scheikowitz leaned over his left shoulder and right shoulder respectively, and watched carefully the result of a pencilled addition which Elkan was making.

"With them crepe meteors," Elkan said at last, "Scharley's order comes to four thousand three hundred dollars."

Polatkin and Scheikowitz nodded in unison.

"It ain't bad for a start," Scheikowitz volunteered as he sat down and lit a cigar.

"For a finish, neither," Polatkin added, "so far as that's concerned."

Elkan wheeled round in his chair and grinned delightedly.

"And you ought to seen Sol Klinger when we walked into the Hanging Gardens," he said. "He got white like a sheet. It tickled Scharley to death, and he went right to work and put his arm through Mrs. Lesengeld's arm and took her right down to the middle table, like she would be a queen already."

"Sure," Scheikowitz agreed, "what does a real merchant like Scharley care if she would wear a sheitel oder not, so long as she is a lady already."

Elkan's grin spread until it threatened to engulf his ears.

"She didn't wear no sheitel," he said.

"What!" Scheikowitz cried. "I didn't think a religious woman like Mrs. Lesengeld would take off her sheitel at her time of life."

"What d'ye mean her time of life?" Elkan cried indignantly. "Friday afternoon yet before Yetta went home from her place there at Bognor Park, Mrs. Lesengeld says to her that a widder don't got to wear no sheitel if she don't want to, which if you think, Mr. Scheikowitz, that fifty-three is a time of life, understand me, I think differencely, especially when I seen her with her hair all fixed up on Saturday night."

"Who fixed it?" Marcus Polatkin asked, and Elkan grinned again.

"Who d'ye suppose?" he replied. "Why, her and Yetta spent pretty near an hour up in our room before they got through, and I tell yer with the way they turned up the hem and fixed the sleeves of one of Yetta's black dresses, it fitted her like it would be made for her."

"And did she look good in it?" Scheikowitz inquired.

"Did she look good in it!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, you can just bet your life, Mr. Polatkin, that there Hortense Feldman wasn't one, two, six with her. In fact, Mr. Polatkin, you would take your oath already that there wasn't two years between 'em. I had a good chance to compare 'em on account when we went down to the Hanging Gardens, understand me, Miss Feldman sits at the next table already."

Polatkin smiled broadly.

"She must have had a big Schreck," he commented. "Why, B. Gans told me last Saturday that Henry D. Feldman thinks that he's going to fix the whole thing up between her and Scharley."

"I guess he ain't got that idee no longer," Elkan declared, "because everybody in Egremont knows Scharley was down visiting Mrs. Lesengeld over Sunday, and takes her and her daughter Fannie and Fannie's husband out oitermobiling."

"You don't tell me?" Scheikowitz exclaimed.

"Furthermore, on Monday," Elkan continued, "he goes down there to dinner with me and Yetta, and Mrs. Lesengeld cooks some Tebeches which fairly melts in your mouth already."

He smacked his lips over the recollection.

"Yesterday, as you know," he went on, "I took Scharley and Mrs. Lesengeld over to Coney Island in an oitermobile and to-night yet we are all going sailing on Egremont Bay."

Polatkin rose to his feet and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," he said, "why not? They're about the same age."

"He's two years older as she is," Elkan declared, "and I bet yer they wouldn't lose no time. It'll be next fall sure."

* * * * *

One busy morning three months later Elkan ripped open a heavy cream-laid envelope and drew out the following announcement, engraved in shaded old English type:

Mrs. Fannie Stubin has the honor of announcing the marriage of her mother

Mrs. Sarah Lesengeld to Mr. Jacob Scharley

On Tuesday the first of October at San Francisco, California

"And what are we going to send them for a present?" Polatkin asked.

Elkan smiled serenely.

"A solid silver chafing dish," he replied without hesitation, "at the very least, big enough to hold five pounds of brown stewed fish sweet and sour."

THE END



THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.



Transcriber's Notes: The 1912 edition of this text contains numerous words and phrases with variant spellings. For the most part these variations have been retained to maintain the flavor of the original text, and only obvious spelling and puncuation errors have been corrected, as detailed below. A few changes have also been made with formatting of punctuation for text consistency. The name of character Kent J. Goldenfein, who is introduced on pages 142-145, changes on page 210 to Kent J. "Goldstein" and subsequently remains "Goldstein" for the remainder of the story. This inconsistency has been retained to match the 1912 text. Typographical Corrections: Page 4. Added close-quotes. ("... Yosel to come to America.") Page 10. Removed close-quotes. (threshold of the cutting room.) Page 14. Changed question mark to comma. ("He is in Minsk," said young Borrochson.) Page 27. Changed "de,manded" to "demanded". (Philip demanded.) Page 27. Changed "jerred" to "jeered". (Philip jeered.) Page 37. Removed close-quotes. (Polatkin rose to his feet.) Page 50. Added period. (the tops of her powdered cheeks.) Page 64. Changed "Scheikowizt" to "Scheikowitz". (Scheikowitz protested.) Page 87. Changed "Sheikowitz" to "Scheikowitz". ("... Mr. Scheikowitz, so sure as I am sitting here....") Page 91. Added open-quotes. ("I suppose, Elkan, you are wondering....") Page 92. Changed "Poltakin" to "Polatkin". ("... Flixman's store?" Polatkin asked.) Page 97. Changed "Mr" to "Mr." ("... right buying idee, Mr. Kapfer....") Page 152. Removed close-quotes. (begun at dinner that evening.) Page 153. Added close-quotes. ("... oder Schwefel & Zucker.") Page 153. Changed "Kolbin's" to "Koblin's". (Max Koblin's house) Page 182. Removed end-quotes. (to make further inquiries.) Page 199. Added close-quotes. ("What time do you eat dinner?") Page 225. Changed "tansactions" to "transactions". (all real-estate transactions involving) Page 241. Added close-quotes. ("... the other fellow's case.") Page 263. Added period. ("... makes up his mind yet.") Page 279. Added period. (his high, piping voice.) Page 281. Added comma. ("If we didn't," he continued....) Page 294. Added close-quotes. ("... for a couple of months.") Page 295. Changed "deprecatio" to "deprecation." (gesture of deprecation.) Page 312. Corrected open-quotes. ("Brown stewed fish....") Page 317. Added close-quotes. ("... Scheikowitz & Company.") Page 320. Added close-quotes. ("... three hundred dollars.")

THE END