ooking the
way you look!' And he says to me: 'Rashkind,' he says, 'there is a whole
lot worser things I could wish myself as you should be my heir,' he
says. 'On account,' he says, 'if a _Schlemiel_ like you would got a
relation which is going to leave you money, Rashkind,' he says, 'it
would be just your luck that the relation dies one day after you do,
even if you would live to be a hundred.'"

He walked toward the door and paused on the threshold.

"Yes, Mr. Polatkin," he concluded, "you could take it from me, if that
feller's got heart disease, Mr. Polatkin, it ain't from overworking it.
So I would ring you up to-morrow afternoon three o'clock and see if
Elkan's come yet."

"I'm agreeable," Polatkin declared; "only one thing I got to ask you:
you should keep your mouth shut to my partner, on account if he hears it
that I am bringing back Elkan from the road just for this here Miss
Maslik, understand me, he would never let me hear the end of it."

Rashkind made a reassuring gesture with his right arm after the fashion
of a swimmer who employs the overhand stroke.

"What have I got to do with your partner?" he said as he started for the
elevator. "If I meet him in the place, I am selling buttons and you
don't want to buy none. Ain't it?"

Polatkin nodded and turned to the examination of a pile of monthly
statements by way of dismissing the marriage broker. Moreover, he felt
impelled to devise some excuse for sending for Elkan, so that he might
have it pat upon the return from lunch of his partner, Philip
Scheikowitz, who at that precise moment was seated in the rear of
Wasserbauer's cafe, by the side of Charles Fischko.

"Yes, Mr. Scheikowitz," Fischko said, "if you would really got the
feller's interest in heart, understand me, you wouldn't wait till
Saturday at all. Write him to-day yet, because this proposition is
something which you could really call remarkable, on account most girls
which they got five thousand dollars dowries, Mr. Scheikowitz, ain't got
five-thousand-dollar faces; _aber_ this here Miss Maslik is something
which when you are paying seventy-five cents a seat on theaytre,
understand me, you don't see such an elegant-looking _Gesicht_. She's a
regular doll, Mr. Scheikowitz!"

"Sure, I know," Scheikowitz agreed; "that's the way it is with them
dolls, Fischko--takes a fortune already to dress 'em."

Fischko flapped the air indignantly with both hands.

"That's where you are making a big mi