t wedding?"

"The wedding with the widow," said the boy.

"The widow?" Philip and Marcus shouted in unison. "What widow?"

"The landlord's widow," the boy answered shyly.

And then as there seemed nothing else to do he buried his face in his
hands and wept aloud.

"Nu, Philip," Marcus said, sitting down beside young Borrochson, "could
the boy help it if his father is a _Ganef_?"

Philip made no reply, and presently Marcus stooped and picked up the
bundle.

"Come," he said gently, "let's go up to the store."

The journey uptown was not without its unpleasant features, for the size
of the bundle not only barred them from both subway and elevated, but
provoked a Broadway car conductor to exhibit what Marcus considered to
be so biased and illiberal an attitude toward unrestricted immigration
that he barely avoided a cerebral hemorrhage in resenting it. They
finally prevailed on the driver of a belt-line car to accept them as
passengers, and nearly half an hour elapsed before they arrived at
Desbrosses Street; but after a dozen conductors in turn had declined to
honour their transfer tickets they made the rest of their journey on
foot.

Philip and young Borrochson carried the offending bundle, for Marcus
flatly declined to assist them. Indeed with every block his enthusiasm
waned, so that when they at length reached Wooster Street his feelings
toward his partner's nephew had undergone a complete change.

"Don't fetch that thing in here," he said as Philip and young Borrochson
entered the showroom with the bundle; "leave it in the shop. You got no
business to bring the young feller up here in the first place."

"What do you mean bring him up here?" Philip cried. "If you wouldn't
butt in at all I intended to take him to my sister's a cousin on Pitt
Street."

Marcus threw his hat on a sample table and sat down heavily.

"That's all the gratitude I am getting!" he declared with bitter
emphasis. "Right in the busy season I dropped everything to help you
out, and you turn on me like this."

He rose to his feet suddenly, and seizing the bundle with both hands he
flung it violently through the doorway.

"Take him to Pitt Street," he said. "Take him to the devil for all I
care. I am through with him."

But Philip conducted his nephew no farther than round the corner on
Canal Street, and when an hour later Yosel Borrochson returned with his
uncle his top-boots had been discarded forever, while his wrinkled,
semi-m