"Reasons I got it," Philip replied. "Come at twelve o'clock at the Park Row Building, sure."
Thus it happened at quarter past twelve Philip and Birdie sat at a table in the Park Row Building in such earnest conversation that a tureenful of soup remained unserved before them at a temperature of seventy degrees.
"An engagement party ain't nothing to me," Philip cried. "What do I care for such things?"
"But it's something to me, Philip," Birdie declared. "Think of the presents, Philip."
"Presents!" Philip repeated. "What for presents would we get it? Bargains in cut glass what would make our flat look like a five-and-ten-cent store."
"But Popper would be crazy if I did a thing like that," Birdie protested. "And, besides, I ain't got no clothes."
"Why, you look like a – like a – now – queen," Philip exclaimed. "And, anyhow, what would you want new clothes for when you got this?"
He dug his hand into his trousers pocket and produced a ring containing a solitaire diamond as big as a hazelnut.
"I took a chance on the size already," he said, "but I bet yer it will fit like it was tailor-made."
He seized her left hand in both of his and passed the ring on to the third finger, while Birdie's cheeks were aglow and her eyes rivalled the brilliancy of the ring itself.
"But – " she began.
"But nothing," Philip interrupted. He rose from his seat and helped Birdie on with her coat. "Waiter," he called, "we come right back here. We are just going over to Jersey for a couple of hours."
He pressed a bill into the waiter's hand.
"Send that soup to the kitchen," he said, "and tell 'em to serve it hot when we come back."
Two hours later they reappeared at the same table, and the grinning waiter immediately went off to the kitchen. When he returned he bore a glass bowl containing a napkin elaborately folded in the shape of a flower, and inside the napkin was a little heap of rice.
V
There was something about Mr. Elkan Goldblatt's face that would make the most hardy real-estater pause before entering into a business deal with him. He had an eye like a poll-parrot with its concomitant beak, and his closely cropped beard and moustache accentuated rather than mollified his harsh appearance.
"Such fellers I wouldn't have no more mercy on than a dawg," he said to his attorney, Eleazer Levy. "Oncet already I practically kicked him out from my house, and then he's got the nerve to come back, and two weeks ago he brings yet a feller with him and makes bluffs that the feller wants to marry my daughter Fannie."
"He was just trying to get you to extend those second mortgages, I suppose," Levy said.
"Sure he was, because this here feller – a homely looking feller with one eye, mind you – says he got to go back to Pennsylvania where his stores is, and we ain't seen nor heard a word from him since," Goldblatt concluded. "And him eating two meals a day by us for ten days yet!"
Eleazer Levy clucked with his tongue in sympathy.
"But, anyhow, now I want we should go right straight ahead and foreclose on Margolius," Goldblatt continued. "Don't lose no time, Levy, and get out the papers to-day. How long would it be before we can sell the property?"
"Six weeks," said Levy, "if I serve the summons to-morrow. I put in a search some days ago, and the feller ain't got a judgment against him."
"So much the better," Goldblatt commented. "The property won't bring the amount of the first mortgage and I suppose I got to buy it in. Then I will get deficiency judgments against that feller, and I'll make him sorry he ever tried any monkey business with me and my daughters. Why, that feller actually turned my own children against me, Levy."
"Is that so?" Levy murmured.
"My Birdie abused me, I assure you, like I was a pickpocket when I says I would foreclose on him," Goldblatt replied. "And even my Fannie, although she is all broke up about that one-eyed feller, she says I should give the young feller a show. What d'ye think of that, hey?"
"Terrible!" Levy replied. "A feller like that deserves all he gets, and you can bet yer sweet life he won't have any let-up from me, Mr. Goldblatt."
Levy was as good as his word, for that very afternoon he filed a notice of pendency of action against the Heidenfeld Avenue property, and the next morning, as Philip left his house, a clerk from Levy's office served him with four copies of the summons and complaint in the foreclosure suit of Goldblatt vs. Margolius, actions numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. But Philip stuffed them into his pocket unread; he had other and more poignant woes than foreclosure suits. Only ten days wed, and he was denied even the sight of his wife longer than five minutes; for she was not endangering future prospects in favour of present happiness.
"We could, anyway, get the furniture out of him," she argued when she saw Philip that day, "and, maybe, a couple of thousand dollars."
"I don't care a pinch of snuff for his furniture," Philip cried. "I will buy the furniture myself."
"But I can't leave Fannie just now," she declared; "she's all broke up about that feller."
"What about me?" Philip protested. "Ain't I broke up, too?"
"So long you waited, you could wait a little longer yet," she replied; "but poor Fannie, you got no idea how that girl takes on."
"She shouldn't worry," Philip cried. "I promised I would fix her up, and I will fix her up."
Daily the same scene was enacted at the Goldblatt residence on One Hundred and Eighteenth Street, and daily Birdie refused to forsake her sister, until six weeks had elapsed.
"But, Birdie," Philip announced for the hundredth time, "so sure as you stand there I couldn't keep this up no longer. I will either go crazy or either I will jump in the river."
Birdie patted him on the back.
"Don't think about it," she said. "Take your mind off it. To-day your property gets sold and Popper says he will be down at the salesroom at twelve o'clock."
"Let 'em sell it," Philip cried; "I don't care."
He turned away after a hurried embrace, and was proceeding down Lenox Avenue toward the subway when Marks Henochstein, the real-estate broker, encountered him. Marks clutched him by the shoulder.
"Well, Philip," Henochstein cried, "you are in luck at last."
"In luck!" Philip exclaimed bitterly. "A dawg shouldn't have the luck what I got it."
"Well, if you don't call it lucky," Henochstein continued, "what would you call it lucky?"
"Excuse me, Henochstein," said Philip; "I ain't good at guessing puzzles. What am I lucky for?"
"Why, ain't you heard it yet?"
"I ain't heard nothing," Philip replied. "Do me the favour and don't keep me on suspension."
"Why, the city is going to widen Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street in front of them houses of yours, and you will get damages. Oi! what damages you will get!"
Philip stared blankly at his informant for one hesitating moment; then he dashed off for the nearest subway station.
Half an hour later he sat in the office of Henry D. Feldman and gasped out his story.
"In three quarters of an hour, Mr. Feldman," he cried, "that property will be sold, and, if it is, the feller what buys it will get damages for the street opening and I will get nix."
"This is a fine time to tell me about it, Margolius," Feldman said. "You came in here six weeks ago and asked me to help you out, and I haven't seen you since. The time to do something was six weeks ago. Why didn't you come back to see me before the suit was started?"
"Because I was busy, Mr. Feldman," Margolius replied. "A whole lot of things happened to me about that time. In the first place, the next day after I saw you I got married."
"What!" Feldman exclaimed, "you got married? Well, Margolius, you recovered pretty quickly from that affair with Birdie Goldblatt."
Margolius stared gloomily at his attorney.
"What d'ye mean I recover from it?" he echoed. "I didn't recover from it, Mr. Feldman. That's who I married – Miss Birdie Goldblatt."
Feldman sat back in his chair.
"Well, of all the unfatherly brutes," he said, "to shut down on his own daughter's husband!"
"Hold on there, Mr. Feldman," Philip interrupted; "he don't know he's shutting down on his daughter's husband, because we was secretly married, y' understand? And even to-day yet the old man don't know nothing about it."