e there. Be a little reasonable, Elkan. What harm would it do
you, supposing you and Yetta should go out to Burgess Park next Sunday?
Because you know the way Louis Stout is, Elkan. He will look over our
line for two weeks yet before he decides on his order--and meantime we
shouldn't entegonize him."

"I don't want to antagonize him," Elkan said; "but me and Yetta made our
arrangements to go out to Johnsonhurst next Sunday."

"Go out there the Sunday after," cried Scheikowitz. "Johnsonhurst would
still be on the map, Elkan. It ain't going to run away exactly."

Thus persuaded, Elkan and Yetta on the following Sunday elbowed their
way through the crowd at the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge, and after
a delay of several minutes boarded a train for Burgess Park.

"Well, all I can say is," Yetta gasped, after they had seized on the
only vacant seats in the car, "if it's this way on Sunday what would it
be on weekdays?"

"There must have been a block," Elkan said meekly. Only by the exercise
of the utmost marital diplomacy had he induced his wife to make the
visit to Louis Stout's home, and one of his most telling arguments had
been the advantage of the elevated railroad journey to Burgess Park
over the subway ride to Johnsonhurst.

"Furthermore," Yetta insisted, referring to another of Elkan's plausible
reasons for visiting Burgess Park, "I suppose all these Italieners and
_Betzimmers_ are customers of yours which we was going to run across on
our way down there. Ain't it?"

Elkan blushed guiltily as he looked about him at the carload of
holiday-makers; but a moment later he exclaimed aloud as he recognized
in a seat across the aisle no less a person than Joseph Kamin, of Le
Printemps, Pittsburgh.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Kamin?" he said.

"Not Elkan Lubliner, from Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company?" Mr. Kamin
exclaimed. "Well, who would think to meet you here!"

He rose from his seat, whereat a bulky Italian immediately sank into it;
and as livery of seizin he appropriated the comic section of Mr. Kamin's
Sunday paper, which had fallen to the floor of the car, and spread it
wide open in front of him.

"Now you lost your seat," Elkan said; "so you should take mine."

He jumped to his feet and Kamin sat down in his place, while a
Neapolitan who hung on an adjacent strap viciously scowled his
disappointment.

"You ain't acquainted with Mrs. Lubliner?" Elkan said.

"Pleased to meetcher," Kamin murmured.

Yet