"You don't say so?" Kapfer said as he drew out his checkbook.
"That's what I am telling you," Flixman continued, "because there's a lot of young loafers running round the streets which nobody got any control over 'em at all; and if they would go to a Talmud Torah School, understand me, not only they learn 'em there a little _Loschen Hakodesch_, y'understand, but they would also pretty near club the life out of 'em."
"I'll write out a receipt on some of the hotel paper here," Kapfer said as he signed and blotted the check.
"Write out two of 'em, so I would have a copy of what I am giving you," Flixman rejoined. "It's always just so good to be businesslike. That's what I told that lawyer to-day. He wants me I should remember a couple of orphan asylums he's interested in, and I told him that if all them suckers would train up their children they would learn a business and not holler round the streets and make life miserable for people, they wouldn't got to be orphans at all. Half the orphans is that way on account they worried their parents to death with their carryings-on, and when they go to orphan asylums they get treated kind yet. And people is foolish enough to pay a lawyer fifty dollars if he should draw up a will to leave the orphan asylum their good hard-earned money."
He snorted indignantly as he examined Kapfer's receipt and compared it with the original.
"Well," he concluded as he appended his signature to the receipt, "I got him down to twenty-five dollars and I'll have that will business settled up this afternoon yet."
He placed the check and the receipt in his wallet and shook hands with Kapfer.
"Good-bye," he said. "And one thing let me warn you against: A _Chosan_ should always get his money in cash _oder_ certified check before he goes under the _Chuppah_ at all; otherwise, after you are married and your father-in-law is a crook, understand me, you could kiss yourself good-bye with your wife's dowry--and don't you forget it!"
Max walked with him down the lobby; and they had barely reached the entrance when Charles Fischko and Miss Yetta Silbermacher arrived.
"Hello, Fischko!" Max cried, as Flixman tottered out into the street; but Fischko made no reply. Instead he suddenly let go Miss Silbermacher's arm and dashed hurriedly to the sidewalk. Max led Miss Silbermacher to a chair and engaged her immediately in conversation. She was naturally a little embarrassed by her unusual surroundings, though she was becomingly--not to say fashionably--attired in garments of her own making; and she gazed timidly about her for her absent lover.