nestly at Elkan and then sat down suddenly.

"Say, lookyhere, Lubliner," he said. "Are you crazy or am I? Last night
you says you are going up with a _Shadchen_ to see Birdie Maslik, and
now you tell me you are engaged, but not to Miss Maslik."

"That's right," Elkan replied.

"Then who in thunder are you engaged to?"

"That's just the point," Elkan said, as he passed his hand through his
hair. "I ain't slept a wink all night on account of it; in fact, this
morning I wondered should I go round there and ask--and then I thought
to myself I would get from you an advice first."

"Get from me an advice!" Kapfer exclaimed. "You mean you are engaged to
a girl and you don't know her name, and so you come down here to ask me
an advice as to how you should find out her name?"

Elkan nodded sadly and leaned his elbow on the table.

"It's like this," he said; and for more than half an hour he regaled
Kapfer with a story that, stripped of descriptive and irrelevant
material concerning Elkan's own feelings in the matter, ought to have
taken only five minutes in the telling.

"And that's the way it is, Mr. Kapfer," Elkan concluded. "I don't know
her name; but a poor little girl like her, which she is so good--and
so--and so----"

Here he became all choked up and Kapfer handed him a cigar.

"Don't go into that again, Lubliner," Kapfer said; "you told me how
good she is six times already. The point is you are in a hole and you
want me I should help you out--ain't it?"

Elkan nodded wearily.

"Well, then, my advice to you is: _Stiegen_," Kapfer continued. "Don't
say a word about this to nobody until you would, anyhow, find out the
girl's name."

"I wasn't going to," Elkan replied; "but there's something else, Mr.
Kapfer. To-night I am to meet this here other _Shadchen_ by the name
Fischko, who is going to take me up to Maslik's house."

"But I thought Miss Maslik was sick," Kapfer said.

"She was sick," Elkan answered, "but she would be better by to-night. So
that's the way it stands. If I would go downtown now and explain to Mr.
Scheikowitz that I am not going up there to-night and that I was there
last night--and----" Here Elkan paused and made an expressive gesture
with both hands. "The fact is," he almost whimpered, "the whole thing is
such a _Mischmasch_ I feel like I was going crazy!"

Kapfer leaned across the table and patted him consolingly on the arm.

"Don't make yourself sick over it," he advised. "Put it