"But the plot ain't bad," Volkovisk suggested, and Kammerman grinned involuntarily.

"To be exact, the two plots aren't bad," he said. "It's made up of two old farces. One of them is '_Embra.s.sons nous, Duval_,' and the other '_Un Garcon, de chez Gaillard_.'"

"But the costumes are really something which you could call beautiful!"

Volkovisk declared.

"Merech approved the costumes too," Kammerman agreed with a laugh. "He left after the first act; and he said that if you endured it to the end you were to be sure to tell Ja.s.sy the colorings were splendid!" He lit a cigarette reflectively. "That man is a regular shark for coloring!" he said. "It seems that when I first met him that night he was only an a.s.sistant cutter; but Elkan Lubliner made him designer very shortly afterward--and it has proved a fine thing for both of them. I understand we bought fifteen thousand dollars' worth of goods from them during the past year!"

"He deserved all the good luck that came to him," Volkovisk cried; and Kammerman placed his hand affectionately on his protege's shoulder.

"There's a special Providence that looks after artists," he said as they reentered the theatre, "whether they paint, write, compose, or design garments."

CHAPTER FIVE

ONE OF ESAU'S FABLES

THE MOUSE SCRATCHES THE LION'S BACK; THE LION SCRATCHES THE MOUSE'S BACK

"No, Elkan," said Louis Stout, of Flugel & Stout. "When you are coming to compare Johnsonhurst _mit_ Burgess Park it's already a molehill to a mountain."

"Burgess Park ain't such high ground neither," Elkan Lubliner retorted.

"Max Kovner says he lives out there on Linden Boulevard three months only and he gets full up with malaria something terrible."

"Malaria we ain't got it in Burgess Park!" Louis declared. "I am living there now six years, Elkan, and I never bought so much as a two-grain quinine pill. Furthermore, Elkan, Kovner's malaria you could catch in Denver, Colorado, or on an ocean steamer, y'understand; because, with a lowlife b.u.m like Max Kovner, which he sits up till all hours of the night--a drinker and a gambler, understand me--you don't got to be a professor exactly to diagonize his trouble. It ain't malaria, Elkan, it's _Katzenjammer!_"

"But my Yetta is stuck on Johnsonhurst," Elkan protested, "and she already makes up her mind we would move out there."

"That was just the way with my wife," Louis said. "For six months she is crying all the time Ogden Estates; and if I would listen to her, Elkan, and bought out there, y'understand, instead we would be turning down offers on our house at an advance of twenty per cent. on the price we paid for it, we would be considering letting the property go under foreclosure! You ought to see that place Ogden Estates nowadays, Elkan--nothing but a bunch of Italieners lives there."

"But----" Elkan began.

"Another thing," Louis Stout broke in: "Out in Johnsonhurst what kind of society do you got? Moe Rabiner lives there, and Marks Pasinsky lives there--and _Gott weiss wer noch_. My partner, Mr. Flugel, is approached the other day with an offer of some property in Johnsonhurst, and I was really in favour he should take it up; but he says to me, 'Louis,' he says, 'a place where such people lives like Pasinsky and Rabiner I wouldn't touch at all!' And he was right, Elkan. Salesmen and designers only lives in Johnsonhurst; while out in Burgess Park we got a nice cla.s.s of people living, Elkan. You know J. Kamin, of the Lee Printemps, Pittsburgh?"

"Used to was one of our best customers," Philip Scheikowitz replied, "though he pa.s.sed us up last year."

"His sister, Mrs. Benno Ortelsburg, lives one house by the other with me," Louis went on. "Her husband does a big real-estate business there.

Might you also know Julius Tarnowitz, of the Tarnowitz-Wixman Department Store, Rochester?"

"Bought from us a couple years a small bill," Marcus Polatkin said. "I wish we could sell him more."

"Well, his brother, Sig Tarnowitz, lives across the street from us,"

Louis cried triumphantly. "Sig's got a fine business there on Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn."

"What for a business?"

"A furniture business," Louis replied. "And might you would know also Joel Ribnik, which he is running the McKinnon-Weldon Drygoods Company, of Cyprus, Pennsylvania?"

"That's the feller what you nearly sold that big bill to last month, Elkan," Scheikowitz commented.

"Well, his sister is married to a feller by the name Robitscher, of Robitscher, Smith & Company, the wallpaper house and interior decorators. They got an elegant place down the street from us."

"But----" Elkan began again.

"But nothing, Elkan!" Marcus Polatkin interrupted with a ferocious wink; for Louis Stout, as junior partner in the thriving Williamsburg store of Flugel & Stout, was viewing Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's line preparatory to buying his spring line of dresses. "But nothing, Elkan!

Mr. Stout knows what he is talking about, Elkan; and if I would be you, instead I would argue with him, understand me, I would take Yetta out to Burgess Park on Sunday and give the place a look."

"That's the idea!" Louis cried. "And you should come and take dinner with us first. Mrs. Stout would be delighted."

"What time do you eat dinner?" Philip Scheikowitz asked, frowning significantly at Elkan.

"Two o'clock," Louis replied, and Polatkin and Scheikowitz nodded in unison.

"He'll be there," Polatkin declared.

"At a quarter before two," Scheikowitz added and Elkan smiled mechanically by way of a.s.sent.

"So come along, Mr. Stout," Polatkin said, "and look at them Ethel Barrymore dresses. I think you'll like 'em."

He led Stout from the office as he spoke while Scheikowitz remained behind with Elkan.

"Honest, Elkan," he said, "I'm surprised to see the way you are acting with Louis Stout!"

"What do you mean, the way I'm acting, Mr. Scheikowitz?" Elkan protested. "Do you think I am going to buy a house in a neighbourhood which I don't want to live in at all just to oblige a customer?"

"_Schmooes_, Elkan!" Scheikowitz exclaimed. "No one asks you you should buy a house there. Be a little reasonable, Elkan. What harm would it do you, supposing you and Yetta should go out to Burgess Park next Sunday?

Because you know the way Louis Stout is, Elkan. He will look over our line for two weeks yet before he decides on his order--and meantime we shouldn't entegonize him."

"I don't want to antagonize him," Elkan said; "but me and Yetta made our arrangements to go out to Johnsonhurst next Sunday."

"Go out there the Sunday after," cried Scheikowitz. "Johnsonhurst would still be on the map, Elkan. It ain't going to run away exactly."

Thus persuaded, Elkan and Yetta on the following Sunday elbowed their way through the crowd at the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge, and after a delay of several minutes boarded a train for Burgess Park.

"Well, all I can say is," Yetta gasped, after they had seized on the only vacant seats in the car, "if it's this way on Sunday what would it be on weekdays?"

"There must have been a block," Elkan said meekly. Only by the exercise of the utmost marital diplomacy had he induced his wife to make the visit to Louis Stout's home, and one of his most telling arguments had been the advantage of the elevated railroad journey to Burgess Park over the subway ride to Johnsonhurst.

"Furthermore," Yetta insisted, referring to another of Elkan's plausible reasons for visiting Burgess Park, "I suppose all these Italieners and _Betzimmers_ are customers of yours which we was going to run across on our way down there. Ain't it?"

Elkan blushed guiltily as he looked about him at the carload of holiday-makers; but a moment later he exclaimed aloud as he recognized in a seat across the aisle no less a person than Joseph Kamin, of Le Printemps, Pittsburgh.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Kamin?" he said.

"Not Elkan Lubliner, from Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company?" Mr. Kamin exclaimed. "Well, who would think to meet you here!"