II
About Miss Birdie Goldblatt's appearance there was something of Maxine Elliott with just a dash of Anna Held, and she wore her clothes so well that she could make a blended-Kamchatka near-mink scarf look like Imperial Russian sable. Thus, when Philip Margolius encountered her on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-first Street his heart fairly jumped in admiration. Nevertheless, he raised his hat with all his accustomed grace, and Miss Goldblatt bowed and smiled in return.
"How d'ye do, Miss Goldblatt," he said. "Ain't it a fine weather?"
"Sure it's fine weather," Miss Goldblatt agreed. "Is that all you stopped me for to tell me it was fine weather?"
"No," Philip said lamely.
"Well, then, I guess I'll be moving on," Miss Goldblatt announced; "because I got a date with Fannie up on Twenty-third Street."
"One minute," Philip cried. "It was about your sister what I wanted to speak to you about."
"What have you got to do with my sister Fannie?" Miss Goldblatt demanded, glaring indignantly at Margolius.
"Why," Philip replied on the spur of the moment, "I got a friend what wants to be introduced to her, a – now – feller in the – now – cloak business."
Miss Goldblatt regarded Philip for one suspicious moment.
"What's his name?" she asked abruptly.
A gentle perspiration broke out on Philip's forehead. He searched his mind for the name of some matrimonially eligible man of his acquaintance, but none suggested itself. Hence, he sparred for time.
"Never mind his name," he said jocularly. "When the time comes I'll tell you his name. He's got it a good business, too, I bet yer."
Miss Goldblatt grew somewhat mollified.
"Why don't you bring him down to the house some night?" she suggested, whereat Philip could not forbear an ironical laugh.
"I suppose your father would be delighted to see me, I suppose. Ain't it?" he said.
"What's he got to do with it?" Miss Goldblatt asked. "Do you think because he's called in them second mortgages that me and Fannie would stand for his being fresh to you if you was to come round to the house?"
"No, I don't," Philip replied; "but just the same, anyhow, he feels sore at me."
"He's got a right to feel sore at you," Miss Goldblatt interrupted. "You come a dozen times to see my sister, and then – "
"That's where you are mistaken," Philip cried; "I come once, the first time, to see your sister, and the other times I come to see you."
"Ain't you got a nerve?" Miss Goldblatt exclaimed.
"Why do I got a nerve?" Philip asked. "Miss Goldblatt – Birdie, what's the matter with me, anyway? I'm young yet – I ain't only thirty-two – and I got a good name in the cloak and suit business as a salesman. Ask anybody. I can make it my five thousand a year easy. And supposing I am a foreigner? There's lots of up-to-date American young fellers what couldn't keep you in hairpins, Birdie."
He paused and looked pleadingly at Birdie, who tossed her head in reply.
"Them houses up in the Bronix," he said, "that's a misfortune what could happen anybody. If I got to let 'em go I'll do it. But pshaw! I could make it up what I lost in them houses with my commissions for one good season already."
"Well, my sister Fannie – " Birdie commenced.
"Never mind your sister Fannie," Philip said. "I will look out for her. If you and me can fix it up, Birdie, I give you my word and honour as a gentleman I will fix it up for Fannie a respectable feller with a good business."
He paused for an expression of opinion from Birdie, but none was forthcoming.
"What are you doing to-night?" he asked.
"Fannie and me was – " she began.
"Not Fannie —you," he broke in. "Because I was going to suggest if you ain't doing nothing might we would go to theaytre?"
"Well, sure," Birdie continued. "Fannie and me could go and we wouldn't say nothing to the old man about it."
"Looky here," Philip pleaded, "must Fannie go?"
"Sure she must go," Birdie answered. "Otherwise, if she don't go I won't go."
Philip pondered for a moment.
"Well – " he commenced.
"And why wouldn't it be a good scheme," Birdie went on, "if you was to ring in this other young feller?"
"What young feller?" Philip innocently asked her.
"What young feller!" Birdie exclaimed. "Why, ain't you just told me – "
"Oh, that's right!" Philip cried. "That's a good idee. I'll see if I can fix it."
He stopped short and looked at his watch. "I'll meet you both in front of the Casino at eight o'clock," he declared.
It was five o'clock and he only had a trifle over three hours to discover a man – young if possible, but, in any event, prosperous, who would be willing to conduct to the theatre a lady of uncertain age with a dark moustache – object: matrimony.
"You must excuse me," he said fervently as he shook Birdie's hand in farewell. "I got a lot of work to do this afternoon."
III
On his way to the office of Schindler & Baum, his employers, he was a prey to misgivings of the gloomiest kind.
"I got such a chance of getting a feller for that Fannie like I would never try at all," he murmured to himself; but, as he turned the corner of Nineteenth Street, Fortune, which occasionally favours the brave, brought him into violent contact with a short, stout person proceeding in the opposite direction.
"Why don't you hire it a whole sidewalk for yourself?" Philip began, and then he recognized the stout gentleman.
"Why, hallo, Mr. Feigenbaum!" he cried.
"Hallo yourself, Margolius!" Feigenbaum grunted. "It's a wonder you wouldn't murder me yet, the way you go like a steam engine already."
"Excuse me," Philip said. "Excuse me, Mr. Feigenbaum. I didn't see you coming. I got to wear glasses, too."
Mr. Feigenbaum glared at Philip with his left eye, the glare in his right eye being entirely beyond control, since it was fixed and constant as the day it was made.
"What are you trying to do, Margolius?" he asked. "Kid me?"
"Kid you!" Philip repeated. "Why should I want to kid you?"
And then for the first time it occurred to him that not only was One-eye Feigenbaum proprietor of the H. F. Cloak Company and its six stores in the northern-tier counties of Pennsylvania, but that he was also a bachelor. Moreover, a bachelor with one eye and the singularly unprepossessing appearance of Henry Feigenbaum would be just the kind of person to present to Fannie Goldblatt, for Feigenbaum, by reason of his own infirmity, could not cavil at Fannie's black moustache, and as for Fannie – well, Fannie would be glad to take what she could get.
"Come over to Hammersmith's and take a little something, Mr. Feigenbaum," he said. "You and me hasn't had a talk together in a long time."
Feigenbaum followed him across the street and a minute later sat down at a table in Hammersmith's rear café.
"What will you take, Mr. Feigenbaum?" Philip asked as the waiter bent over them solicitously.
"Give me a package of all-tobacco cigarettes," Feigenbaum ordered, "and a rye-bread tongue sandwich."
Philip asked for a cup of coffee.
"Looky here, Feigenbaum," Philip commenced after they had been served, "you and me is known each other now since way before the Spanish War already, when I made my first trip by Sol Unterberg. Why is it I ain't never sold you a dollar's worth of goods?"
"No, and you never will, Margolius," Feigenbaum said as he licked the crumbs from his fingers; "and I ain't got a thing against you, because I think you're a decent, respectable young feller."
Having thus endorsed the character of his host, Feigenbaum lit a cigarette and grinned amiably.
"But Schindler & Baum got it a good line, Feigenbaum," Philip protested.
"Sure I know they got it a good line," Feigenbaum agreed; "but I ain't much on going to theaytres or eating a bunch of expensive feed. No, Margolius, I like to deal with people what gives their line the benefit of the theaytres and the dinners."
"What you mean?" Philip cried.
"I mean Ellis Block, from Saracuse, New York, shows me a line of capes he bought it from you, Margolius," Feigenbaum continued, "which the precisely same thing I got it down on Division Street at a dollar less apiece from a feller what never was inside of so much as a moving pictures, with or without a customer, Margolius, and so he don't got to add the tickets to the price of the garments."