"Does Paul sell all the antiques he collects?" Elkan asked.
"Does he?" B. Gans rejoined. "Well, I should say he does! Myself I bought from him in the past two weeks half a dozen chairs, understand me--four last week and two to-day--which I am paying him five hundred dollars for the lot. They're worth it, too, Elkan. I never seen finer examples of the period."
"But are you sure they're gen-wine?" Elkan asked as they reached the entrance to his apartment house.
"Paul says they are," B. Gans answered, slapping Elkan's shoulder in farewell; "and if he's mistaken, Elkan, then I'm content that I should be."
Two hours later, however, after Elkan had recounted to Yetta all the incidents of Dishkes' meeting and the resulting sale of the chairs, his conscience smote him.
"What d'ye think, Yetta?" he asked. "Should I tell Paul and Gans the chairs ain't gen-wine, _oder_ not?"
For more than ten minutes Yetta wrinkled her forehead over this knotty ethical point; then she delivered her opinion.
"Mr. Gans tells you he is just as happy if they ain't gen-wine--ain't it?" she said.
"And Mr. Paul acted honest, because he didn't know they wasn't gen-wine neither, ain't it?" she continued.
"Then," Yetta declared, "if you are taking it so particular as all that, Elkan, there's only one thing for you to do--give me the thirty dollars!"
"Is that so!" Elkan exclaimed ironically. "And what will you do with the money?"
"The only thing I can do with it, _Schlemiel_," she said. "Ten dollars I will give Louis Dishkes he should take a trip up to the country over Sunday and visit his wife."
"And what will we do with the other twenty?" Elkan asked.
"We'll send a present with him to Mrs. Dishkes," Yetta concluded with a smile, "and it wouldn't be no antics neither!"
"_Aber_ me and Yetta is got it all fixed up we would go to Mrs. Kotlin's already," Elkan Lubliner protested as he mopped his forehead one hot Tuesday morning in July. "The board there is something elegant, Mr. Scheikowitz. Everybody says so."
"_Yow!_ everybody!" Philip Scheikowitz retorted. "Who is everybody, Elkan? A couple drummers like Marks Pasinsky, one or two real estaters, understand me, and the rest of 'em is wives from J to L retailers, third credit, which every time their husbands comes down to spend Sunday with 'em, y'understand, he must pretty near got to pawn the shirt from his back for car fare already."