"What did he tell you about him?" she asked.
"Why," Scharley said, drawing vigorously on his imagination, "he says to me what a bright young feller he is and----"
Here he reflected that in a highly competitive trade like the cloak and suit business this statement sounded a trifle exaggerated.
"And," he went on hurriedly, "he told me how he saw you and him with Mrs. Lesengeld up at the hotel the other evening, and I says, 'What,' I says, 'you don't mean Mrs. Lesengeld whose husband used to was in the pants business?' and he said he didn't know, 'because,' I says, 'if that's the same party,' I says, 'I would like for her to come up to the hotel and take dinner with me some time,' I says."
"And I hope you will," he concluded earnestly, "to-morrow night sure."
"I ain't fixed to go to no swell hotel," she demurred. "I ain't got no clothes nor nothing."
"What do you care about clothes, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Scharley protested.
"And besides," Yetta said with sudden inspiration, "we could get up a little chafing-dish dinner in our room, ain't it?"
"For that matter we could do it in my room," Scharley cried, as there sounded a vigorous knocking on the outside of the door leading to the veranda, and a moment later Williams entered.
"Excuse me, Mr. Scharley," he said, "but I have to be getting back to the hotel and if you're quite through we'll go and look at that map of the lots down in the office."
"Sit down, Mr. Williams," he said, "and drink the cup of coffee of your life."
"I could promise you one thing, Mr. Williams," he went on, "I got a great idee of buying some lots here and building a little house on 'em, _gemütlich_ just like this, and if I do, Williams, I would take them lots from you for certain sure. Only one thing, Williams, I want you to do me for a favour."
He paused and puffed carefully on his cigar.
"I want you to pick me out a couple good vacant rooms on the top floor of the Salisbury for Saturday night," he said, "where I could give a shaving-dish party, so if any of the guests of the hotel objects, understand me, they wouldn't get the smell of the _Bortch_, coffee, and brown stewed fish sweet and sour."
On the following Wednesday afternoon Elkan sat at his desk, while Marcus Polatkin and Philip Scheikowitz leaned over his left shoulder and right shoulder respectively, and watched carefully the result of a pencilled addition which Elkan was making.