"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 repet.i.tion of the t.i.tters.

"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 b.u.t.t 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 d.a.m.ned!" 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 a.s.sembled 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 rea.s.suringly 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 pa.s.sed 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."