Philip washed down a tart rejoinder with a huge gulp.
"Not that I don't go to theaytre once in a while," Feigenbaum went on; "but when I go I pay for it myself."
Philip nodded.
"Supposing I should tell you, Mr. Feigenbaum," he said, "that I didn't want to sell you no goods."
"Well, if you didn't want to sell me no goods," Feigenbaum replied with a twinkle in his eye, "the best thing to do would be to take me to a show, because then I sure wouldn't buy no goods from you."
"All right," Philip replied; "come and take dinner with me and we'll go and see the Lily of Constantinople."
"I wouldn't take dinner with you because I got to see a feller on East Broadway at six o'clock," Feigenbaum said; "but if you are willing I will meet you in front of the Casino at eight o'clock."
"Sure I'm willing," Philip said; "otherwise, I wouldn't of asked you."
"All right," Feigenbaum said, rising from his chair. "Eight o'clock, look for me in front of the Casino."
At seven o'clock Philip alighted from a Forty-second Street car. He strode into a fashionable hotel and handed ten dollars to the clerk in the theatre-ticket office.
"Give me four orchestra seats for the Casino for to-night," he said.
Thence he proceeded to the grill-room and consumed a tenderloin steak, hashed-brown potatoes, a mixed salad, pastry and coffee, and washed down the whole with a pint of ebullient refreshment.
Finally, he lit a fine cigar and paid the check, after which he took a small morocco-bound book from his waistcoat pocket. He turned to the last page of a series headed, "Schindler & Baum, Expense Account," and made the following entry:
"To entertainment of Henry Feigenbaum, $15.00."
IV
The acquaintance of Henry Feigenbaum with Miss Fannie Goldblatt could hardly be called love at first sight.
"Mr. Feigenbaum," Philip said when they all met in front of the Casino, "this is a friend of mine by the name Miss Fannie Goldblatt; also, her sister Birdie."
The two ladies bowed, but Feigenbaum only blinked at them with unaffected astonishment.
"All right," he stammered at last. "All right, Margolius. Let's go inside."
During the short period before the rising of the curtain Birdie and Philip conversed in undertones, while Fannie did her best to interest her companion.
"Ain't it a pretty theaytre?" she said by way of prelude.
Feigenbaum glanced around him and grunted: "Huh, huh."
"You're in the same line as Mr. Margolius, ain't you?" Fannie continued.
"Cloaks and suits, retail," Feigenbaum replied. "I got six stores in the northern-tier counties of Pennsylvania."
"Then you don't live in New York?" Fannie hazarded.
"No, I live in Pennsylvania," said Feigenbaum. "But I used to live in New York when I was a young feller."
"Why, you're a young feller yet," Fannie suggested coyly.
"Me, I ain't so young no longer," Feigenbaum answered. "At my age I could have it already grandchildren old enough to bring in a couple dollars a week selling papers."
"I believe you should bring up children sensible, too," Miss Goldblatt agreed heartily. "If I had children I would teach 'em they should earn and save money young."
"So?" Feigenbaum said.
"Sure," Miss Goldblatt continued. "I always say that if you make children to be economical when they're young they're economical when they grow up. My poor mother, selig, always impressed it on me I should be economical, and so I am economical."
"Is that so?" Feigenbaum gasped. He felt that he was a drowning man and looked around him for floating straws.
"I ain't so helpless like some other ladies that I know," Miss Goldblatt went on. "My poor mother, selig, was a good housekeeper, and she taught me everything what she knew. She used to say: 'The feller what gets my Fannie won't never die of the indigestion.'"
Feigenbaum nodded gloomily.
"Did you ever suffer from stummick trouble, Mr. Feigenbaum?" she asked.
The composer of the Lily of Constantinople came to Feigenbaum's assistance by scoring the opening measure of the overture for brass and woodwind with heavy passages for the cassa grande and cymbals, and when the uproar gave way to a simple rendition of the song hit of the show, My Bosphorus Queen, Fannie surrendered herself to the spell of its marked rhythm and forgot to press Feigenbaum for an answer.
During the entire first act Feigenbaum fixed his eyes on the stage, and as soon as the curtain fell for the first entr'acte he uttered no word of apology, but made a hurried exit to the smoking-room. There Philip found him a moment later.
"Well, Feigenbaum," Philip cried, "how do you like the show?"
"The show is all right, Margolius," Feigenbaum replied, "but the next time you are going to steer me up against something like that Miss Fannie Goldblatt, Margolius, let me know. That's all."
"Why, what's the matter with her?" Philip asked.
"There's nothing the matter with her," Feigenbaum said, "only she reminds me of a feller what used to work by me up in Sylvania by the name Pincus Lurie. I had to get rid of him because trade fell off on account the children complained he made snoots at 'em to scare 'em. He didn't make no snoots, Margolius; that was his natural face what he got it, the same like Miss Goldblatt."
"You don't know that girl, Feigenbaum," Philip replied. "That girl's got a heart. Oi! what a heart that girl got – like a watermelon."
"I know, Margolius," Feigenbaum replied; "but she also got it a moustache like a dago. Why don't she shave herself, Margolius?"
"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Philip said coldly.
"I don't know her good enough yet," Feigenbaum retorted, "and how it looks now I ain't never going to."
But the way to Feigenbaum's heart lay through his stomach just as accurately as it avoided his pocketbook, so that when Miss Fannie Goldblatt suggested, after the final curtain, that they all go up to One Hundred and Eighteenth Street and have a supper at home instead of at a restaurant, she made a dent in Feigenbaum's affections.
"Looky here, Birdie," Philip whispered, "how about the old man?"
"Don't you worry about him," she said. "He went to Brownsville to play auction pinocle, and I bet yer he don't get home till five o'clock."
Half an hour afterward they sat around the dining-room table, and Fannie helped Feigenbaum to a piece of gefüllte Fische, a delicacy which never appears on the menus of rural hotels in Pennsylvania. At the first mouthful Feigenbaum looked at Fannie Goldblatt, and while, to be sure, she did have some hair on her upper lip, it was only a slight down which at the second mouthful became still slighter. Indeed, after the third slice of fish Feigenbaum was ready to declare it to be a most becoming down, very bewitching and Spanish in appearance.
Following the gefüllte Fische came a species of tripe farcie, the whole being washed down with coffee and topped off with delicious cake – cake which could be adequately described only by kissing the tips of one's fingers.
"After all, Margolius," Feigenbaum commented as he lit an all-tobacco cigarette on their way down the front stoop of the Goldblatt residence – "after all, she ain't such a bad-looking woman. I seen it lots worser, Margolius."
"That's nothing what we got it this evening," Philip said as they started off for the subway; "you should taste the Kreploch what that girl makes it."
"I'm going to," Feigenbaum said; "they asked me I should come to dinner to-morrow night."
But Philip knew from his own experience that the glamour engendered of Fannie's gefüllte Fische would soon be dispelled, and then Henry Feigenbaum would hie him to the northern-tier counties of Pennsylvania, leaving Philip's love affair in worse condition than before.
"I got to cinch it," he murmured to himself as he went downtown next morning, "before that one-eyed feller skips out on me."
As soon as he reached Schindler & Baum's office he rang up the Goldblatt house, assuming for that purpose a high tenor voice lest Goldblatt himself answer the 'phone; but again fortune favoured him, and it was Birdie who responded.
"Birdie," he said, "do me the favour and come to lunch with me at the Park Row Building."
"Why so far downtown?" Birdie asked.