"Leave that to me," he said sagely, and the next moment they entered the Harlem Winter Garden to find Charles Fischko gazing sadly at a solution of bicarbonate of soda and ammonia, a tumblerful of which stood in front of him on the table.
"Mr. Fischko," Kapfer said, "this is my friend Ury Shemansky, the gentleman I was speaking to you about."
"No relation to Shemansky who used to was in the customer pedler business on Ridge Street?" Fischko asked.
"Because there's a feller, understand me, which he went to work and married a poor girl; and ever since he's got nothing but _Mazel_. The week afterward he found in the street a diamond ring worth two hundred dollars, and the next month a greenhorn comes over with ten thousand rubles and wants to go as partners together with him in business. In a year's time Shemansky dissolves the partnership and starts in the remnant business with five thousand dollars net capital. He ain't been established two weeks, understand me, when a liquor saloon next door burns out and he gets a thousand dollars smoke damage; and one thing follows another, y'understand, till to-day he's worth easy his fifty thousand dollars. That's what it is to marry a poor girl, Mr. Shemansky." He took a pull at the tumbler of bicarbonate and made an involuntary grimace. "Furthermore, I am knowing this here Miss Silbermacher ever since she is born, pretty nearly!" Fischko cried.
"You did!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, why didn't you tell me that, Kapfer?"
"I couldn't think of everything," Kapfer protested.
"Go ahead," Elkan said, turning to Fischko; "let me know all about her--everything! I think I got a right to know--ain't it?"
"Sure you have," Fischko said as he cleared his throat oratorically; and therewith he began a laudatory biography of Yetta Silbermacher, while Elkan settled himself to listen. With parted lips and eyes shining his appreciation, he heard a narrative that justified beyond peradventure his choice of a wife, and when Fischko concluded he smote the table with his fist.
"By jiminy!" he cried. "A feller should ought to be proud of a wife like that!"
"Sure he should," Kapfer said; "and her and Fischko would be down at my room at the Prince Clarence to-morrow at two."