ordially at Mrs. Lesengeld.

"And I hope you will," he concluded earnestly, "to-morrow night sure."

Mrs. Lesengeld shook her head.

"I ain't fixed to go to no swell hotel," she demurred. "I ain't got no
clothes nor nothing."

"What do you care about clothes, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Scharley protested.

"And besides," Yetta said with sudden inspiration, "we could get up a
little chafing-dish dinner in our room, ain't it?"

"For that matter we could do it in my room," Scharley cried, as there
sounded a vigorous knocking on the outside of the door leading to the
veranda, and a moment later Williams entered.

"Excuse me, Mr. Scharley," he said, "but I have to be getting back to
the hotel and if you're quite through we'll go and look at that map of
the lots down in the office."

Scharley waved his hand airily.

"Sit down, Mr. Williams," he said, "and drink the cup of coffee of your
life."

He handed the room clerk a cigar.

"I could promise you one thing, Mr. Williams," he went on, "I got a
great idee of buying some lots here and building a little house on 'em,
_gemuetlich_ just like this, and if I do, Williams, I would take them
lots from you for certain sure. Only one thing, Williams, I want you to
do me for a favour."

He paused and puffed carefully on his cigar.

"I want you to pick me out a couple good vacant rooms on the top floor
of the Salisbury for Saturday night," he said, "where I could give a
shaving-dish party, so if any of the guests of the hotel objects,
understand me, they wouldn't get the smell of the _Bortch_, coffee, and
brown stewed fish sweet and sour."

* * * * *

On the following Wednesday afternoon Elkan sat at his desk, while Marcus
Polatkin and Philip Scheikowitz leaned over his left shoulder and right
shoulder respectively, and watched carefully the result of a pencilled
addition which Elkan was making.

"With them crepe meteors," Elkan said at last, "Scharley's order comes
to four thousand three hundred dollars."

Polatkin and Scheikowitz nodded in unison.

"It ain't bad for a start," Scheikowitz volunteered as he sat down and
lit a cigar.

"For a finish, neither," Polatkin added, "so far as that's concerned."

Elkan wheeled round in his chair and grinned delightedly.

"And you ought to seen Sol Klinger when we walked into the Hanging
Gardens," he said. "He got white like a sheet. It tickled Scharley to
death, and he went right to work and put his arm th