h us," Elkan said, "and we'll
see you would get there on time."

"Where are you going?" Mrs. Lesengeld asked.

"Over to the Salisbury," Elkan answered, and Mrs. Lesengeld sank back on
to the bench.

"_Geh weg_, Mr. Lubliner," she cried. "I am now fifty years old and I
was never in such a place in my life, especially which under this shawl
I got only a plain cotton dress yet."

Elkan flapped his hand reassuringly.

"A fine-looking lady like you, Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, as he seized
her hands and drew her gently to her feet, "looks well in anything."

"And you'll have a water ice in the Hanging Gardens with us," Yetta
persisted as she slipped a hand under Mrs. Lesengeld's shawl and pressed
her arm affectionately. Ten minutes later they arrived at the stoop of
the New Salisbury, to the scandalization and horror of the three score
A to F first credit manufacturers and their wives. Moreover,
approximately a hundred and fifty karats of blue white diamonds rose and
fell indignantly on the bosoms of twenty or thirty credit-high
retailers' wives, when the little, toilworn woman with her shawl and
ritualistic wig entered the Hanging Gardens chatting pleasantly with
Elkan and Yetta; and as they seated themselves at a table the buzz of
conversation hushed into silence and then roared out anew with an
accompaniment of titters.

At the next table Sol Klinger plied with liquors and cigars the
surviving guests of his dinner, and when Elkan nodded to him, he ignored
the salutation with a blank stare. He raged inwardly, not so much at
Elkan's invasion of that fashionable precinct as at the circumstance
that his guest of honour had departed with Miss Feldman for a stroll on
the boardwalk some ten minutes previously, and he was therefore unable
to profit by Elkan's _faux pas_.

"The feller ain't got no manners at all," he said to Max Koblin, who
nodded gloomily.

"It's getting terrible mixed down here, Sol," Max commented as he
hiccoughed away a slight flatulency. "Honestly if you want to be in
striking distance of your business, Sol, so's you could come in and out
every day, you got to rub shoulders with everybody, ain't it?"

He soothed his outraged sensibilities with a great cloud of smoke that
drifted over Elkan's table, and Mrs. Lesengeld broke into a fit of
coughing which caused a repetition of the titters.

"And do you still make that brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Mrs.
Lesengeld?" Yetta asked by way of putting th