stake," he declared. "The Masliks
got living in the house with 'em a girl which for years already she
makes all Miss Maslik's dresses and Mrs. Maslik's also. B. Maslik told
me so himself, Mr. Scheikowitz. He says to me: 'Fischko,' he says, 'my
Birdie is a girl which she ain't accustomed she should got a lot of
money spent on her,' he says; 'the five thousand dollars is practically
net,' he says, 'on account his expenses would be small.'"

"Is she a good cook?" Scheikowitz asked.

"A good cook!" Fischko cried. "Listen here to me, Mr. Scheikowitz. You
know that a _Shadchen_ eats sometimes in pretty swell houses. Ain't it?"

Scheikowitz nodded.

"Well, I am telling you, Mr. Scheikowitz, so sure as I am sitting here,
that I got in B. Maslik's last Tuesday a week ago already a piece of
plain everyday _gefuellte Hechte_, Mr. Scheikowitz, which honestly, if
you would go to Delmonico's _oder_ the Waldorfer, understand me, you
could pay as high as fifty cents for it, Mr. Scheikowitz, and it
wouldn't be--I am not saying better--but so good even as that there
_gefuellte Hechte_ which I got it by B. Maslik."

Scheikowitz nodded again.

"All right, Fischko," he said, "I will write the boy so soon as I get
back to the office yet; but one thing I must beg of you: don't say a
word about this to my partner, y'understand, because if he would hear
that I am bringing home Elkan from the road just on account of this
_Shidduch_ you are proposing, understand me, he would make my life
miserable."

Fischko shrugged his shoulders until his head nearly disappeared into
his chest.

"What would I talk to your partner for, Mr. Scheikowitz?" he said. "I am
looking to you in this here affair; so I would stop round the day after
to-morrow afternoon, Mr. Scheikowitz, and if your partner asks me
something a question, I would tell him I am selling thread _oder_
buttons."

"Make it buttons," Scheikowitz commented, as he rose to his feet;
"because we never buy buttons from nobody but the Prudential Button
Company."

On his way back to his office Scheikowitz pondered a variety of reasons
for writing Elkan to return, and he had tentatively adopted the most
extravagant one when, within a hundred feet of his business premises, he
encountered no less a personage than Julius Flixman.

"_Wie geht's_, Mr. Flixman?" he cried. "What brings you to New York?"

Flixman saluted Philip with a limp handclasp.

"I am living here now," he said. "I am giving