"I ain't never heard his name," Milton replied; "but he is seemingly crazy about music. I seen him here every time I come."
"Well, I don't blame him none," Elkan commented; "because you take the Harlem Winter Garden, for instance, and though the music is rotten, understand me, they got the nerve to charge you yet for a lot of food which half the time you don't want at all; whereas here they didn't even ask us we should buy so much as a glass beer."
At this juncture the short, stout person returned and proceeded to entertain Elkan and Yetta by pointing out among the audience the figures of local and international millionaires.
"And all them fellers is crazy about music too?" Elkan asked.
"So crazy," his neighbour said, "that the little man over there, with the white beard, spends almost twenty thousand a year on it!"
"And yet," Milton said bitterly, "there's plenty fellers in the city which year in and year out composes chamber music and symphonic music which they couldn't themselves make ten dollars a week; and, when it comes right down to it, none of them millionaires would loosen up to such new beginners for even five hundred dollars to help them get a hearing."
The short person received Milton's outburst with a faint smile.
"I've heard that before," he commented, "but I never had the pleasure of meeting any of those great unknown composers."
"That's because most of 'em is so bashful they ain't got sense enough to push themselves forward," Milton replied; "_aber_ if you really want to meet one I could take you to-night yet to a café on Delancey Street where there is playing a trio which the pianist is something you could really call a genius."
"You don't tell me!" Elkan's neighbour cried. "Why, I should be delighted to go with you."
"How about it, Mr. Lubliner?" Milton asked. "Are you and Mrs. Lubliner agreeable to go downtown after the show to the café on Delancey Street? It's a pretty poor neighbourhood already."
"Sure, I know," she said; "but it wouldn't be the first time me and Elkan was in Delancey Street."
"Then it's agreed that we're all going to hear the genius," Elkan's neighbour added. "I heard you call one another Jassy and Lubliner--it's hardly fair you shouldn't know my name too."