"_Wie gehts_, Mister Scheikowitz?" Gifkin cried, and Philip received the salutation with a distant nod.
"I hope you don't hold no hard feelings for me," Gifkin began.
"Me hold hard feelings for you?" Scheikowitz exclaimed. "I guess you forget yourself, Gifkin. A boss don't hold no hard feelings for a feller which is working in the place, Gifkin; otherwise the feller gets fired and stays fired, Gifkin."
At this juncture Polatkin in the rôle of peacemaker created a diversion.
"Joe," he called to young Borrochson, who was passing the cutting-room door, "come in here a minute."
"I guess you seen this young feller before?" he said.
"I think I seen him before somewheres," he replied.
"Sure you seen him before," Polatkin rejoined. "His name is Borrochson."
"Borrochson!" Gifkin cried, and Joe, whose colour had heightened at the close scrutiny to which he had been subjected, began to grow pale.
"Sure, Yosel Borrochson, the son of your old neighbour," Polatkin explained, but Gifkin shook his head slowly.
"That ain't Yosel Borrochson," he declared, and then it was that Polatkin and Scheikowitz first noticed Joe's embarrassment. Indeed even as they gazed at him his features worked convulsively once or twice and he dropped unconscious to the floor.
In the scene of excitement that ensued Gifkin's avowed discovery was temporarily forgotten, but when Joe was again restored to consciousness Polatkin drew Gifkin aside and requested an explanation.
"What do you mean the boy ain't Yosel Borrochson?" he demanded.
"I mean the boy ain't Yosel Borrochson," Gifkin replied deliberately. "I know this here boy, Mr. Polatkin, and, furthermore, Borrochson's boy is got one bum eye, which he gets hit with a stone in it when he was only four years old already. Don't I know it, Mr. Polatkin, when with my own eyes I seen this here boy throw the stone yet?"
"Well, then, who is this boy?" Marcus Polatkin insisted.
"He's a boy by the name Lubliner," Gifkin replied, "which his father was Pincus Lubliner, also a crook, Mr. Polatkin, which he would steal anything from a toothpick to an oitermobile, understand me."
"Pincus Lubliner!" Polatkin repeated hoarsely.
"That's who I said," Gifkin continued, rushing headlong to his destruction. "Pincus Lubliner, which honestly, Mr. Polatkin, there's nothing that feller wouldn't do--a regular _Rosher_ if ever there was one."