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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Object: matrimony, by Montague Glass
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Object: matrimony
+
+Author: Montague Glass
+
+Release Date: September 8, 2011 [EBook #37360]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OBJECT: MATRIMONY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianna Adair, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Object: Matrimony
+
+
+[Illustration: "DID YOU EVER SUFFER FROM STUMMICK TROUBLE?"]
+
+
+          OBJECT:
+        MATRIMONY
+
+            by
+        MONTAGUE
+          GLASS
+
+    GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+          1912
+
+
+
+
+    _Copyright, 1909, by_
+  THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+    _Copyright, 1912, by_
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+
+_All rights reserved including that of translation into foreign
+languages, including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+Object: Matrimony
+
+BY MONTAGUE GLASS
+
+
+
+
+"Real estate!" Philip Margolius cried bitterly; "that's a business for a
+business man! If a feller's in the clothing business and it comes bad
+times, Mr. Feldman, he can sell it his goods at cost and live anyhow;
+but if a feller's in the real-estate business, Mr. Feldman, and it comes
+bad times, he can't not only sell his houses, but he couldn't give 'em
+away yet, and when the second mortgage forecloses he gets deficiency
+judgments against him."
+
+"Why don't you do this?" Mr. Feldman suggested. "Why don't you go to the
+second mortgagee and tell him you'll convey the houses to him in
+satisfaction of the mortgage? Those houses will never bring even the
+amount of the first mortgage in these times, and surely he would rather
+have the houses than a deficiency judgment against you."
+
+"That's what I told him a hundred times. Believe me, Mr. Feldman, I used
+hours and hours of the best salesmanship on that feller," Margolius
+answered, "and all he says is that he wouldn't have to pay no interest,
+insurance and taxes on a deficiency judgment, while a house what stands
+vacant you got to all the time be paying out money."
+
+"But as soon as they put the subway through," Mr. Feldman continued,
+"that property around Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street and Heidenfeld
+Avenue will go up tremendously."
+
+"Sure I know," Margolius agreed; "but when a feller's got four double
+flat-houses and every flat yet vacant, futures don't cut no ice. Them
+tenants couldn't ride on futures, Mr. Feldman; and so, with the nearest
+trolley car ten blocks away, I am up against a dead proposition."
+
+"Wouldn't he give you a year's extension?" Mr. Feldman asked.
+
+"He wouldn't give me positively nothing," Margolius replied hopelessly.
+"That feller's a regular Skylark. He wants his pound of meat every time,
+Mr. Feldman. So I guess you got to think up some scheme for me that I
+should beat him out. Them mortgages falls due in ten days, Mr. Feldman,
+and we got to act quick."
+
+Mr. Feldman frowned judicially. In New York, if an attorney for a realty
+owner knows his business and neglects his professional ethics he can so
+obstruct an action to foreclose a mortgage as to make Jarndyce vs.
+Jarndyce look like a summary proceeding. But Henry D. Feldman was a
+conscientious practitioner, and never did anything that might bring him
+before the grievance committee of the Bar Association. Moreover, he was
+a power in the Democratic organization and right in line for a Supreme
+Court judgeship, and so it behooved him to be careful if not ethical.
+
+"Why don't you go and see Goldblatt again, and then if you can't move
+him I'll see what I can do for you?" Feldman suggested.
+
+"But, Mr. Feldman," Margolius protested, "I told it you it ain't no use.
+Goldblatt hates me worser as poison."
+
+Feldman leaned back in his low chair with one arm thrown over the back,
+after the fashion of Judge Blatchford's portrait in the United States
+District Courtroom.
+
+"See here, Margolius: what's the real trouble between you and
+Goldblatt?" he said. "If you're going to get my advice in this matter
+you will have to tell me the whole truth. _Falsus in uno, falsus in
+omnibus_, you know."
+
+"You make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Margolius replied. "It ain't
+nothing like that, and whoever told it you is got another think coming.
+The trouble was about his daughter Fannie. You could bring a horse a
+pail of water, Mr. Feldman, but no one could make the horse drink it if
+he don't want to, and that's the way it was with me. Friedman, the
+Schatchen, took me up to see Goldblatt's daughter Fannie, and I assure
+you I ain't exaggeration a bit when I tell you she's got a moustache
+what wouldn't go bad with a dago barber yet."
+
+"Why, I thought Goldblatt's daughter was a pretty good looker," Feldman
+exclaimed.
+
+"That's Birdie Goldblatt," Margolius replied, blushing. "But
+Fannie--that's a different proposition, Mr. Feldman. Well, Goldblatt
+gives me all kinds of inducements; but I ain't that kind, Mr. Feldman.
+If I would marry I would marry for love, and it wouldn't make no
+difference to me if the girl would have it, say, for example, only two
+thousand dollars. I would marry her anyway."
+
+"Very commendable," Mr. Feldman murmured.
+
+"But Fannie Goldblatt--that is somebody a young feller wouldn't
+consider, not if her hair hung with diamonds, Mr. Feldman," Margolius
+continued. "Although I got to admit I did go up to Goldblatt's house a
+great many times, because, supposing she does got a moustache, she could
+cook _gefüllte Fische_ and _Fleischkugeln_ better as Delmonico's
+already. And then Miss Birdie Goldblatt----"
+
+He faltered and blushed again, while Feldman nodded sympathetically.
+
+"Anyhow, what's the use talking?" Margolius concluded. "The old man gets
+sore on me, and when Marks Henochstein offers him the second mortgages
+on them Heidenfeld Avenue houses it was yet boom-time in the Bronix, and
+it looked good to Goldblatt; so he made Henochstein give him a big
+allowance, and he bought 'em. And now when he's got me where he wants
+me I can kiss myself good-bye with them houses."
+
+He rose to his feet and put on his gloves, for Philip was what is
+popularly known as a swell dresser. Indeed, there was no
+smarter-appearing salesman in the entire cloak and suit trade, nor was
+there a salesman more ingratiating in manner and hence more successful
+with lady buyers.
+
+"If the worser comes to the worst," he said, "I will go through
+bankruptcy. I ain't got nothing but them houses, anyway." He fingered
+the two-and-a-half-carat solitaire in his scarf to find out if it were
+still there. "And they couldn't get my salary in advance, so that's what
+I'll do."
+
+He shook hands with Mr. Feldman.
+
+"You could send me a bill for your advice, Mr. Feldman," he said.
+
+"That's all right," Feldman replied as he ushered his client out of the
+office. "I'll add it to my fee in the bankruptcy matter."
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"What do you mean?" Feldman asked. "Why wouldn't he know his own
+daughter was married?"
+
+"Because she's living home yet," Philip replied, and "I can't persuade
+her to go housekeeping, neither."
+
+Feldman frowned for a moment and then he struck the desk with his fist.
+
+"By jiminy!" he shouted, "you've got the old man by the whiskers!"
+
+It was now Philip's turn to ask what Feldman meant.
+
+"Why," the latter explained, "your wife's inchoate right of dower is
+still outstanding."
+
+"That's where you make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Philip corrected.
+"My Birdie is a neat dresser and never so much as a pin out of place."
+
+"You don't understand," Feldman continued. "As soon as Birdie and you
+got married she took an interest in your property."
+
+"Sure she took an interest in my property," Philip assented. "Why, if it
+wouldn't be for her I wouldn't know nothing about this here sale
+to-day."
+
+"But I mean that as soon as she married you she became vested with the
+right to receive the rents of a third of that property during her
+lifetime as soon as you died," said Feldman.
+
+"Well, we won't worry about that," Philip said with a deprecatory wave
+of his hand, "because, in the first place, that property is pretty near
+vacant and don't bring in enough rents to pay the taxes, and, in the
+second place, I'm still good and healthy and I wouldn't die for a long
+time yet."
+
+"Oh, what's the use!" Feldman cried. "What I mean is that they can't
+foreclose those second mortgages unless they make Birdie a party to the
+suit and serve her with the summons; so, all you have to do to stop the
+sale is to go down to the salesroom and, when the auctioneer starts to
+ask for bids, get up and tell 'em all about it. Why, they'll have to
+begin their suit all over again."
+
+"But," Philip protested, "if I tell 'em all about it the old man will
+throw Birdie out of the house."
+
+"Hold on!" Feldman broke in. "You mustn't tell them you're married to
+Birdie. Just tell them you're married, and let them find out your wife's
+name for themselves. Although, to be sure, that won't take long, for the
+record of marriage licenses at the city hall will show it."
+
+"License nothing!" Philip cried. "We didn't get no license at the city
+hall. We got married by a justice of the peace in Jersey City."
+
+"Fine!" Feldman exclaimed, his professional ethics thrown to the winds.
+"That'll keep 'em guessing as long as you want."
+
+"All I want is a month, and by that time I can raise the money and fix
+the whole thing up," Margolius replied.
+
+Feldman looked at his watch.
+
+"Chase yourself," he said; "it's a quarter of twelve, and the
+foreclosure sale begins at noon."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+On the rostrum of an auctioneer in the Vesey Street salesroom stood
+Eleazer Levy in weighty conversation with Miles M. Scully, the referee
+in foreclosure. Scully's brow was furrowed into a thousand earned
+wrinkles, and the little knot of real-estate brokers who regularly
+attend foreclosure sales gazed reverently on the two advocates.
+
+"And here was this guy," Levy concluded, "with nothing but a pair of
+sixes all the time."
+
+"But in a table-stakes game," Scully murmured, "you make a sight more if
+you don't butt into every pot. If you think you're topped lay 'em down.
+That's what I do, and it pays."
+
+They were waiting for the auctioneer to appear, and Goldblatt hung
+around the edge of the crowd and gazed anxiously at them. He had heard
+that morning of the proposed street widening and wanted the sale to go
+through without a hitch. At length the auctioneer arrived and the clerk
+read off the notice of sale in a monotonous gabble just as Philip
+elbowed his way through the crowd.
+
+"Now, then, gentlemen," the auctioneer announced pompously, "the four
+parcels will be sold separately. Each is subject to a first mortgage of
+twenty thousand dollars and is otherwise free and clear except the
+taxes. The amount of taxes is----"
+
+"Hey, there!" Philip cried at this juncture. "I got something to say,
+too."
+
+The auctioneer paused and fixed Philip with what was intended to be a
+withering look.
+
+"Put that man out!" the auctioneer called to one of the attendants.
+
+"You could put me out," Philip yelled, "if you want to, but you couldn't
+put my wife out, because she ain't been served with the summons and
+complaint in the first place, and she ain't here in the second place."
+
+Goldblatt turned pale and started for the rostrum, while the auctioneer
+motioned the attendant to hold off for a minute.
+
+"Is he a married man?" the auctioneer asked Levy.
+
+"He's a faker," Levy replied. "Go ahead with the sale."
+
+"Am I a faker?" Philip yelled, holding up his left hand. "Well, look at
+that there ring."
+
+He pulled it off with an effort and handed it to the auctioneer.
+
+"Look inside," he said. And, sure enough, the inner side bore the
+inscription: "B. G. to P. M., 10-20-'09." Goldblatt looked at it, too;
+but B. G. meant nothing to him and he handed it back to the auctioneer.
+
+"That's only a scheme what he's trying to work it," he said. "Give him
+back the ring and go ahead with the sale."
+
+"One moment," said Miles M. Scully. "I'm the referee here, and I ain't
+going to take no such chance as that. I'm going to adjoin this here sale
+one week and investigate what this here guy says in the meantime."
+
+Forthwith, the auctioneer announced a week's adjournment of the four
+sales, and Philip resumed his wedding ring with a parting diabolical
+grin at Goldblatt, and left the auction-room. He went to the nearest
+telephone pay station and rang up the Goldblatt residence, but for over
+half an hour he received only Central's assurance that as soon as there
+was an answer she would call him.
+
+"But, Central," he protested, "there's got to be somebody there. They
+can't all be out."
+
+And Philip was right. There were two people sitting in the front parlour
+of the Goldblatt residence, and another and more interested person
+stooped in the back parlour, with her ear to the crack of the sliding
+doors which divided the two rooms. The telephone bell trilled
+impatiently at brief intervals, but all three were oblivious to its
+appeal; for the two persons in the front parlour were engaged in
+conversation of an earnest character, and the person in the rear room
+would not have missed a word of it for all the telephones in the world.
+
+"Yes, Fannie," said one of the two persons, "I come back to you, anyhow,
+and I come back for good."
+
+He placed his arms around her ample waist.
+
+"I assure you, Fannie," he concluded, "them dollar-a-day American-plan
+hotels in the northern-tier counties is nothing but poison to a feller.
+I am pretty near starved."
+
+"Why didn't you say so at first?" Fannie replied, rising from the couch
+where she had been sitting with Feigenbaum. "I got some fine _gefüllte
+Fische_ in the ice-box."
+
+Whereupon Birdie answered the 'phone.
+
+"Hallo!" came a voice from the other end of the wire. "Where was you all
+the time? I got some good news for you."
+
+"I've got some good news for you, too," Birdie replied. "Fannie and Mr.
+Feigenbaum are engaged."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Elkan Goldblatt usually arrived home at seven o'clock to find his dinner
+smoking on the table. His daughter Fannie always attended to the
+carving, but on the night of the foreclosure sale it was Birdie who
+presided at the head of the board.
+
+"Where's Fannie?" he asked.
+
+"She went out to dinner," Birdie explained.
+
+Elkan nodded and lapsed into gloomy silence.
+
+"What's the matter now?" Birdie inquired.
+
+"That lowlife Margolius," he said, "what do you think from that loafer?
+He goes to work and gets married."
+
+Birdie gasped and turned white, all of which her father mistook for
+symptoms of astonishment.
+
+"Ain't that a loafer for you?" he continued. "All the time he hangs
+around here, and then he goes to work and gets married."
+
+"Who did he marry?" Birdie asked innocently.
+
+"A question!" Goldblatt exclaimed. "Who can tell it who a lowlife like
+him would marry?"
+
+Birdie tossed her head.
+
+"He ain't no lowlife just because he gets married," she retorted.
+"What's more, any girl would be glad to get a good-looking, decent young
+feller like Philip Margolius."
+
+Goldblatt laid down his knife and fork.
+
+"You are crazy in the head," he said. "Why should you stick up for a
+young feller what comes around here and upsets my whole house? _You_ I
+don't care about, because you could always get a husband; but
+Fannie--that's different again. It ain't enough for that loafer that he
+disappointed her himself, but he also got to bring around here that
+one-eyed feller--another such lowlife as Margolius--and he also
+disappoints Fannie. That feller Margolius is a dawg, Birdie, believe
+me."
+
+Birdie rose from her seat and threw her napkin on to the floor.
+
+"I won't sit here and listen to such talk," she cried and ran out of the
+room. For a moment Goldblatt essayed to finish his dinner, and then he,
+too, rose and followed Birdie. He found her weeping on the parlour
+lounge.
+
+"Birdie!" he cried. "Birdiechen, what are you taking on so for?"
+
+"I won't have you say such things about Ph-Ph--Feigenbaum," she sobbed.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because Mr. Feigenbaum came here this afternoon and proposed to
+Fannie," she explained to her father, "and they're downtown now getting
+the ring from a friend of his what keeps a jewellery store on Grand
+Street."
+
+Goldblatt sat down heavily on the lounge and wiped his forehead. For ten
+minutes he sat motionless in the shrouded gloom of that front parlour
+before he could realize his daughter's good fortune.
+
+"After all," he said finally, "when a feller's got six stores you could
+easy excuse him one eye."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed to talk that way," Birdie cried. "Mr.
+Feigenbaum is a decent business man, and if it wouldn't be for
+Philip--Philip Margolius--Fannie would of lived and died an old maid."
+
+At this juncture came a ring at the bell and the sound of voices in the
+hall. It was Fannie and her fiancé, who had returned from Grand Street,
+and the next moment Goldblatt clasped his affianced daughter in his arms
+and bestowed on her great kisses that fairly resounded down the block.
+Next he grabbed Feigenbaum's hand and shook it up and down.
+
+"The happiest day what I ever lived," he cried, slapping his new
+son-in-law on the back. For almost a quarter of an hour Fannie and
+Birdie mingled their tears with their father's embraces, and in the
+midst of the excitement the bell rang again. When the maid opened the
+street door some one inquired for Mr. Goldblatt in a barytone voice
+whose familiar timbre chilled into silence the joyful uproar.
+
+"Margolius!" Goldblatt hissed. He started for the hall with blood in his
+eye, when Feigenbaum seized him by the arm.
+
+"Mr. Goldblatt," he said, "for my sake don't make no fuss with
+Margolius. He's a friend of mine, and if it wouldn't be for him Fannie
+and me would never of met already."
+
+As Philip entered the darkened front parlour there was a silence so
+profound that he believed the room to be empty.
+
+"Excuse me," he cried when he recognized the assembled company. "I
+thought Mr. Goldblatt was alone."
+
+He turned to his father-in-law.
+
+"Mr. Goldblatt, could I speak to you for a minute by yourself?" he
+asked.
+
+Goldblatt coughed impressively.
+
+"Margolius," he announced, "if you got anything to say to me, say it
+right here. I ain't got no private business with you."
+
+"All right," Philip replied cheerfully. "I come here to ask you how much
+would you take it for them second mortgages what you hold on my Two
+Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street property?"
+
+Goldblatt waved his hand haughtily.
+
+"You come to the wrong party, Margolius," he said. "Because I just made
+up my mind to something. I made up my mind that because Mr. Feigenbaum
+is engaged to my Fannie I will give her them mortgages as a marriage
+portion. So you should ask Feigenbaum that question, not me."
+
+While Philip turned pale at this announcement, Feigenbaum grew
+positively crimson.
+
+"Looky here, Goldblatt," he protested to his proposed father-in-law; "I
+don't want you should unload them second mortgages on me."
+
+"What's the matter with you, Feigenbaum?" Goldblatt retorted. "Them
+second mortgages is as good as gold. Only thing is they got to be
+foreclosed against Margolius' wife."
+
+"His wife!" Feigenbaum and Fannie cried with one voice, for Birdie had
+kept her secret well.
+
+"Yes," Goldblatt replied, "his wife. That lowlife has got a wife. But
+who or what she is nobody don't know."
+
+"Hold on, Goldblatt!" cried a voice from the hall. "There's somebody
+that does know."
+
+The next moment a short, stout person entered the parlour. It was
+Eleazer Levy, who had rung the bell and had been admitted to the house
+unnoticed.
+
+"Yes, Margolius," he said, "you thought you could fool an old
+practitioner like me. I seen you didn't get out no license in this
+county, so I hiked over to Jersey City and, sure enough, I spotted you."
+
+He turned to Birdie.
+
+"Mrs. Margolius," he said, "here's four copies of the supplemental
+summons and amended complaint in the foreclosure suits of Goldblatt vs.
+Margolius, actions numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4."
+
+"What do you mean?" Goldblatt cried.
+
+"I mean," Levy answered, "that your daughter Birdie married Philip
+Margolius in Jersey City on the twentieth of October last."
+
+Elkan Goldblatt collapsed in the nearest chair, while Feigenbaum ran
+downstairs for the bottle of schnapps. At length Goldblatt was restored.
+
+"So, Margolius," he croaked, "you are a thief, too. You steal my
+daughter on me?"
+
+"That ain't here nor there," Margolius said with his arm around
+Birdie's waist and her head on his shoulder. "That ain't here nor there.
+How much will you take it now for a satisfaction piece of them
+mortgages?"
+
+Goldblatt looked at Feigenbaum, who returned his glance unmoved.
+
+"For a marriage portion," Feigenbaum declared, "second mortgages is
+nix."
+
+There was an embarrassing silence, and finally Goldblatt cleared his
+throat.
+
+"All right, Margolius," he said; "you married my Birdie, and I suppose I
+got to stand for it, so you can take them four second mortgages and keep
+'em as a marriage portion yourself."
+
+Birdie seized her father around the neck and kissed him on the ear.
+
+"Then we are forgiven? Ain't it?" she cried.
+
+"Sure you are forgiven," Goldblatt said. "Only, Margolius has got to pay
+Levy's costs and disbursements."
+
+"And the referee's fees and the auctioneer's fees," Levy added.
+
+"I am agreeable," Philip replied.
+
+Levy turned and beamed a benediction on his client's reunited family. "I
+wish you all joy," he said.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Transcriber Notes:
+
+  Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Object: matrimony, by Montague Glass
+
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diff --git a/37360-8.zip b/37360-8.zip
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+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Object Matrimony, by Montague Glass.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
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+         clear: both;
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+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
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+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
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+              margin-bottom: .75em;
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+    div.versobackground
+              {
+              width:400px;
+              height:271px;
+              background-position:center;
+              background:url(images/verso01_a.jpg);
+              border:2px;
+              }
+    div.textbox
+              {
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+              height:110px;
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+              color:#000000;
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+
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+
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+                 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
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+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Object: matrimony, by Montague Glass
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Object: matrimony
+
+Author: Montague Glass
+
+Release Date: September 8, 2011 [EBook #37360]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OBJECT: MATRIMONY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianna Adair, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/tp01.jpg" width="375" height="688" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter extraspacetop">
+<img src="images/halftp01c.jpg" width="400" height="378" alt="Title Page Art" title="Title Page Art" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter extraspacetop">
+<img src="images/frontis01_b.jpg" width="450" height="238" alt="DID YOU EVER SUFFER FROM STUMMICK TROUBLE?" title="" />
+</div>
+<div class="extraspacebot center">
+<span class="caption">"DID YOU EVER SUFFER FROM STUMMICK TROUBLE?"</span>
+</div>
+
+<h1>
+OBJECT:<br />
+MATRIMONY
+</h1>
+
+<p class="extraspacetop center">By MONTAGUE GLASS<br />
+GARDEN CITY NEW YORK<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1912</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter extraspacetop">
+<img src="images/tp02a.jpg" width="400" height="435" alt="Title Page Illustration" title="Title Page Illustration" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center extraspacetop">
+<i>Copyright, 1909, by</i></p>
+<p class="smcap center">The Curtis Publishing Company</p>
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1912, by</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Doubleday, Page &amp; Company</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter versobackground">
+
+<div class="center textbox">
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved including<br />
+that of translation<br />
+into foreign languages,<br />
+including the<br />
+Scandinavian</i></p></div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter extraspacetop extraspacebot">
+<img src="images/p01aa.jpg" width="301" height="145" alt="Object: Matrimony By Montague Glass" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/p01bb.jpg" width="55" height="68" alt="R" title="" /></div>
+<div class="unindent">EAL ESTATE!" Philip
+Margolius cried bitterly;
+"that's a business
+for a business man!
+If a feller's in the
+clothing business and it comes
+bad times, Mr. Feldman, he can
+sell it his goods at cost and live
+anyhow; but if a feller's in the
+real-estate business, Mr. Feldman,
+and it comes bad times, he can't
+not only sell his houses, but he
+couldn't give 'em away yet, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+when the second mortgage forecloses
+he gets deficiency judgments
+against him."</div>
+
+<p>"Why don't you do this?" Mr.
+Feldman suggested. "Why don't
+you go to the second mortgagee and
+tell him you'll convey the houses to
+him in satisfaction of the mortgage?
+Those houses will never bring even
+the amount of the first mortgage
+in these times, and surely he would
+rather have the houses than a deficiency
+judgment against you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I told him a hundred
+times. Believe me, Mr.
+Feldman, I used hours and hours
+of the best salesmanship on that
+feller," Margolius answered, "and
+all he says is that he wouldn't have
+to pay no interest, insurance and
+taxes on a deficiency judgment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+while a house what stands vacant
+you got to all the time be paying
+out money."</p>
+
+<p>"But as soon as they put the
+subway through," Mr. Feldman
+continued, "that property around
+Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth
+Street and Heidenfeld Avenue will
+go up tremendously."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I know," Margolius
+agreed; "but when a feller's got
+four double flat-houses and every
+flat yet vacant, futures don't cut
+no ice. Them tenants couldn't
+ride on futures, Mr. Feldman; and
+so, with the nearest trolley car ten
+blocks away, I am up against a dead
+proposition."</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't he give you a year's
+extension?" Mr. Feldman asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't give me positively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+nothing," Margolius replied
+hopelessly. "That feller's a regular
+Skylark. He wants his pound of
+meat every time, Mr. Feldman.
+So I guess you got to think up some
+scheme for me that I should beat
+him out. Them mortgages falls
+due in ten days, Mr. Feldman, and
+we got to act quick."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Feldman frowned judicially.
+In New York, if an attorney for a
+realty owner knows his business
+and neglects his professional ethics
+he can so obstruct an action to
+foreclose a mortgage as to make
+Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce look like a
+summary proceeding. But Henry
+D. Feldman was a conscientious
+practitioner, and never did anything
+that might bring him before
+the grievance committee of the Bar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+Association. Moreover, he was a
+power in the Democratic organization
+and right in line for a Supreme
+Court judgeship, and so it behooved
+him to be careful if not ethical.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you go and see
+Goldblatt again, and then if you
+can't move him I'll see what I can
+do for you?" Feldman suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Feldman," Margolius
+protested, "I told it you it ain't no
+use. Goldblatt hates me worser as
+poison."</p>
+
+<p>Feldman leaned back in his low
+chair with one arm thrown over
+the back, after the fashion of
+Judge Blatchford's portrait in the
+United States District Courtroom.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Margolius: what's the
+real trouble between you and Goldblatt?"
+he said. "If you're going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+to get my advice in this matter you
+will have to tell me the whole truth.
+<i>Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus</i>,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"You make a big mistake, Mr.
+Feldman," Margolius replied. "It
+ain't nothing like that, and whoever
+told it you is got another think
+coming. The trouble was about
+his daughter Fannie. You could
+bring a horse a pail of water, Mr.
+Feldman, but no one could make
+the horse drink it if he don't want
+to, and that's the way it was with
+me. Friedman, the Schatchen,
+took me up to see Goldblatt's
+daughter Fannie, and I assure you
+I ain't exaggeration a bit when I
+tell you she's got a moustache what
+wouldn't go bad with a dago
+barber yet."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, I thought Goldblatt's
+daughter was a pretty good looker,"
+Feldman exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's Birdie Goldblatt," Margolius
+replied, blushing. "But
+Fannie&mdash;that's a different proposition,
+Mr. Feldman. Well,
+Goldblatt gives me all kinds of inducements;
+but I ain't that kind,
+Mr. Feldman. If I would marry
+I would marry for love, and it
+wouldn't make no difference to me
+if the girl would have it, say, for
+example, only two thousand dollars.
+I would marry her anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Very commendable," Mr. Feldman
+murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"But Fannie Goldblatt&mdash;that
+is somebody a young feller wouldn't
+consider, not if her hair hung with
+diamonds, Mr. Feldman," Margolius<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+continued. "Although I got
+to admit I did go up to Goldblatt's
+house a great many times, because,
+supposing she does got a moustache,
+she could cook <i>gef&uuml;llte Fische</i>
+and <i>Fleischkugeln</i> better as Delmonico's
+already. And then Miss
+Birdie Goldblatt&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He faltered and blushed again,
+while Feldman nodded sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, what's the use talking?"
+Margolius concluded. "The
+old man gets sore on me, and when
+Marks Henochstein offers him the
+second mortgages on them Heidenfeld
+Avenue houses it was yet boom-time
+in the Bronix, and it looked
+good to Goldblatt; so he made
+Henochstein give him a big allowance,
+and he bought 'em.  And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+now when he's got me where he
+wants me I can kiss myself good-bye
+with them houses."</p>
+
+<p>He rose to his feet and put on
+his gloves, for Philip was what is
+popularly known as a swell dresser.
+Indeed, there was no smarter-appearing
+salesman in the entire
+cloak and suit trade, nor was there
+a salesman more ingratiating in
+manner and hence more successful
+with lady buyers.</p>
+
+<p>"If the worser comes to the
+worst," he said, "I will go through
+bankruptcy. I ain't got nothing
+but them houses, anyway." He
+fingered the two-and-a-half-carat
+solitaire in his scarf to find out if
+it were still there. "And they
+couldn't get my salary in advance,
+so that's what I'll do."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with Mr. Feldman.</p>
+
+<p>"You could send me a bill for
+your advice, Mr. Feldman," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," Feldman replied
+as he ushered his client out
+of the office. "I'll add it to my
+fee in the bankruptcy matter."</p>
+
+<hr class="r15" />
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"How d'ye do, Miss Goldblatt,"
+he said. "Ain't it a fine weather?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure it's fine weather," Miss
+Goldblatt agreed. "Is that all you
+stopped me for to tell me it was
+fine weather?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Philip said lamely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I guess I'll be moving
+on," Miss Goldblatt announced;
+"because I got a date with Fannie
+up on Twenty-third Street."</p>
+
+<p>"One minute," Philip cried. "It
+was about your sister what I
+wanted to speak to you about."</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got to do with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+my sister Fannie?" Miss Goldblatt
+demanded, glaring indignantly at
+Margolius.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," Philip replied on the
+spur of the moment, "I got a
+friend what wants to be introduced
+to her, a&mdash;now&mdash;feller in the&mdash;now&mdash;cloak
+business."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Goldblatt regarded Philip
+for one suspicious moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What's his name?" she asked
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind his name," he said
+jocularly. "When the time comes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+I'll tell you his name. He's got it
+a good business, too, I bet yer."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Goldblatt grew somewhat
+mollified.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you bring him down
+to the house some night?" she
+suggested, whereat Philip could not
+forbear an ironical laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose your father would be
+delighted to see me, I suppose.
+Ain't it?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't," Philip replied;
+"but just the same, anyhow, he
+feels sore at me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's got a right to feel sore at
+you," Miss Goldblatt interrupted.
+"You come a dozen times to see
+my sister, and then&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you got a nerve?" Miss
+Goldblatt exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do I got a nerve?" Philip
+asked. "Miss Goldblatt&mdash;Birdie,
+what's the matter with me, anyway?
+I'm young yet&mdash;I ain't
+only thirty-two&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+couldn't keep you in hairpins,
+Birdie."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and looked pleadingly
+at Birdie, who tossed her head in
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my sister Fannie&mdash;&mdash;"
+Birdie commenced.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He paused for an expression of
+opinion from Birdie, but none was
+forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing to-night?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Fannie and me was&mdash;&mdash;" she
+began.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Fannie&mdash;<i>you</i>," he broke
+in. "Because I was going to suggest
+if you ain't doing nothing
+might we would go to theaytre?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sure," Birdie continued.
+"Fannie and me could go and we
+wouldn't say nothing to the old
+man about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Looky here," Philip pleaded,
+"must Fannie go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure she must go," Birdie
+answered. "Otherwise, if she don't
+go I won't go."</p>
+
+<p>Philip pondered for a moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;&mdash;" he commenced.</p>
+
+<p>"And why wouldn't it be a good
+scheme," Birdie went on, "if you
+was to ring in this other young
+feller?"</p>
+
+<p>"What young feller?" Philip innocently
+asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"What young feller!" Birdie
+exclaimed. "Why, ain't you just
+told me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's right!" Philip cried.
+"That's a good idee. I'll see if I
+can fix it."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short and looked at
+his watch. "I'll meet you both
+in front of the Casino at eight
+o'clock," he declared.</p>
+
+<p>It was five o'clock and he only
+had a trifle over three hours to
+discover a man&mdash;young if possible,
+but, in any event, prosperous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+who would be willing to conduct to
+the theatre a lady of uncertain age
+with a dark moustache&mdash;object:
+matrimony.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<hr class="r15" />
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<p>On his way to the office of
+Schindler &amp; Baum, his employers,
+he was a prey to misgivings of the
+gloomiest kind.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+the brave, brought him into violent
+contact with a short, stout person
+proceeding in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you hire it a whole
+sidewalk for yourself?" Philip began,
+and then he recognized the
+stout gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, hallo, Mr. Feigenbaum!"
+he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo yourself, Margolius!"
+Feigenbaum grunted. "It's a
+wonder you wouldn't murder me
+yet, the way you go like a steam
+engine already."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me," Philip said. "Excuse
+<i>me</i>, Mr. Feigenbaum. I didn't
+see you coming. I got to wear
+glasses, too."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Feigenbaum glared at
+Philip with his left eye, the glare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+in his right eye being entirely
+beyond control, since it was fixed
+and constant as the day it was
+made.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you trying to do,
+Margolius?" he asked. "Kid me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Kid you!" Philip repeated.
+"Why should I want to kid you?"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+infirmity, could not cavil at Fannie's
+black moustache, and as for
+Fannie&mdash;well, Fannie would be
+glad to take what she could get.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Feigenbaum followed him across
+the street and a minute later sat
+down at a table in Hammersmith's
+rear caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you take, Mr.
+Feigenbaum?" Philip asked as the
+waiter bent over them solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a package of all-tobacco
+cigarettes," Feigenbaum
+ordered, "and a rye-bread tongue
+sandwich."</p>
+
+<p>Philip asked for a cup of coffee.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Having thus endorsed the character
+of his host, Feigenbaum lit a
+cigarette and grinned amiably.</p>
+
+<p>"But Schindler &amp; Baum got it
+a good line, Feigenbaum," Philip
+protested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What you mean?" Philip cried.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Philip washed down a tart rejoinder
+with a huge gulp.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I don't go to theaytre
+once in a while," Feigenbaum went
+on; "but when I go I pay for it
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>Philip nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Supposing I should tell you,
+Mr. Feigenbaum," he said, "that
+I didn't want to sell you no goods."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Philip replied;
+"come and take dinner with me and
+we'll go and see the Lily of Constantinople."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't take dinner with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I'm willing," Philip said;
+"otherwise, I wouldn't of asked
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Feigenbaum said, rising
+from his chair. "Eight o'clock,
+look for me in front of the Casino."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me four orchestra seats for
+the Casino for to-night," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Thence he proceeded to the grill-room
+and consumed a tenderloin
+steak, hashed-brown potatoes, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+mixed salad, pastry and coffee, and
+washed down the whole with a pint
+of ebullient refreshment.</p>
+
+<p>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
+&amp; Baum, Expense Account,"
+and made the following entry:</p>
+
+<p>"To entertainment of Henry
+Feigenbaum, $15.00."</p>
+
+<hr class="r15" />
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<p>The acquaintance of Henry
+Feigenbaum with Miss Fannie
+Goldblatt could hardly be called
+love at first sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Feigenbaum," Philip said
+when they all met in front of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+Casino, "this is a friend of mine
+by the name Miss Fannie Goldblatt;
+also, her sister Birdie."</p>
+
+<p>The two ladies bowed, but
+Feigenbaum only blinked at them
+with unaffected astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he stammered at
+last. "All right, Margolius. Let's
+go inside."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it a pretty theaytre?" she
+said by way of prelude.</p>
+
+<p>Feigenbaum glanced around
+him and grunted: "Huh, huh."</p>
+
+<p>"You're in the same line as Mr.
+Margolius, ain't you?" Fannie continued.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Cloaks and suits, retail," Feigenbaum
+replied. "I got six stores
+in the northern-tier counties of
+Pennsylvania."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't live in New
+York?" Fannie hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I live in Pennsylvania,"
+said Feigenbaum. "But I used to
+live in New York when I was a
+young feller."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you're a young feller
+yet," Fannie suggested coyly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you should bring up
+children sensible, too," Miss Goldblatt
+agreed heartily. "If I had
+children I would teach 'em they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+should earn and save money
+young."</p>
+
+<p>"So?" Feigenbaum said.</p>
+
+<p>"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, <i>selig</i>, always impressed
+it on me I should be economical,
+and so I am economical."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" Feigenbaum
+gasped. He felt that he was a
+drowning man and looked around
+him for floating straws.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't so helpless like some
+other ladies that I know," Miss
+Goldblatt went on. "My poor
+mother, <i>selig</i>, was a good housekeeper,
+and she taught me everything
+what she knew. She used<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+to say: 'The feller what gets my
+Fannie won't never die of the indigestion.'"</p>
+
+<p>Feigenbaum nodded gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever suffer from stummick
+trouble, Mr. Feigenbaum?"
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>cassa grande</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>During the entire first act Feigenbaum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+fixed his eyes on the
+stage, and as soon as the curtain
+fell for the first <i>entr'acte</i> he uttered
+no word of apology, but made a
+hurried exit to the smoking-room.
+There Philip found him a moment
+later.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Feigenbaum," Philip
+cried, "how do you like the show?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter with
+her?" Philip asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know that girl,
+Feigenbaum," Philip replied.
+"That girl's got a heart. Oi! what
+a heart that girl got&mdash;like a watermelon."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Margolius," Feigenbaum
+replied; "but she also got it
+a moustache like a dago. Why don't
+she shave herself, Margolius?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you ask her yourself?"
+Philip said coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know her good enough
+yet," Feigenbaum retorted, "and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+how it looks now I ain't never
+going to."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Looky here, Birdie," Philip
+whispered, "how about the old
+man?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour afterward they sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+around the dining-room table, and
+Fannie helped Feigenbaum to a
+piece of <i>gef&uuml;llte Fische</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Following the <i>gef&uuml;llte Fische</i> came
+a species of <i>tripe farcie</i>, the whole
+being washed down with coffee and
+topped off with delicious cake&mdash;cake
+which could be adequately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+described only by kissing the tips
+of one's fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, Margolius," Feigenbaum
+commented as he lit an all-tobacco
+cigarette on their way
+down the front stoop of the Goldblatt
+residence&mdash;"after all, she
+ain't such a bad-looking woman.
+I seen it lots worser, Margolius."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nothing what we got it
+this evening," Philip said as they
+started off for the subway; "you
+should taste the <i>Kreploch</i> what
+that girl makes it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to," Feigenbaum
+said; "they asked me I should come
+to dinner to-morrow night."</p>
+
+<p>But Philip knew from his own
+experience that the glamour engendered
+of Fannie's <i>gef&uuml;llte Fische</i>
+would soon be dispelled, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+Henry Feigenbaum would hie him
+to the northern-tier counties of
+Pennsylvania, leaving Philip's love
+affair in worse condition than before.</p>
+
+<p>"I got to cinch it," he murmured
+to himself as he went downtown
+next morning, "before that one-eyed
+feller skips out on me."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he reached Schindler
+&amp; 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Birdie," he said, "do me the
+favour and come to lunch with me
+at the Park Row Building."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so far downtown?" Birdie
+asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Reasons I got it," Philip replied.
+"Come at twelve o'clock
+at the Park Row Building, sure."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"An engagement party ain't
+nothing to me," Philip cried.
+"What do I care for such things?"</p>
+
+<p>"But it's something to me,
+Philip," Birdie declared. "Think
+of the presents, Philip."</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But Popper would be crazy if
+I did a thing like that," Birdie
+protested. "And, besides, I ain't
+got no clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you look like a&mdash;like
+a&mdash;now&mdash;queen," Philip exclaimed.
+"And, anyhow, what
+would you want new clothes for
+when you got this?"</p>
+
+<p>He dug his hand into his trousers
+pocket and produced a ring containing
+a solitaire diamond as big
+as a hazelnut.</p>
+
+<p>"I took a chance on the size
+already," he said, "but I bet yer
+it will fit like it was tailor-made."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" she began.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He pressed a bill into the waiter's
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Send that soup to the kitchen,"
+he said, "and tell 'em to serve it
+hot when we come back."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="r15" />
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+wants to marry my daughter Fannie."</p>
+
+<p>"He was just trying to get you
+to extend those second mortgages,
+I suppose," Levy said.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure he was, because this here
+feller&mdash;a homely looking feller
+with one eye, mind you&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>Eleazer Levy clucked with his
+tongue in sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+to-day. How long would it be
+before we can sell the property?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" Levy murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"My Birdie abused me, I assure
+you, like I was a pickpocket when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"We could, anyway, get the
+furniture out of him," she argued
+when she saw Philip that day,
+"and, maybe, a couple of thousand
+dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care a pinch of snuff for
+his furniture," Philip cried. "I will
+buy the furniture myself."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't leave Fannie just
+now,"  she declared; "she's all
+broke up about that feller."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What about me?" Philip protested.
+"Ain't I broke up, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"She shouldn't worry," Philip
+cried. "I promised I would fix
+her up, and I will fix her up."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Birdie patted him on the back.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'em sell it," Philip cried;
+"I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Philip," Henochstein
+cried, "you are in luck at last."</p>
+
+<p>"In luck!" Philip exclaimed bitterly.
+"A dawg shouldn't have
+the luck what I got it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you don't call it lucky,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+Henochstein continued, "what
+would you call it lucky?"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, Henochstein," said
+Philip; "I ain't good at guessing
+puzzles. What am I lucky for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ain't you heard it yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't heard nothing," Philip
+replied. "Do me the favour and
+don't keep me on suspension."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>Philip stared blankly at his informant
+for one hesitating moment;
+then he dashed off for the nearest
+subway station.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later he sat in the
+office of Henry D. Feldman and
+gasped out his story.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What!" Feldman exclaimed,
+"you got married? Well, Margolius,
+you recovered pretty quickly
+from that affair with Birdie Goldblatt."</p>
+
+<p>Margolius stared gloomily at
+his attorney.</p>
+
+<p>"What d'ye mean I recover
+from it?" he echoed. "I didn't
+recover from it, Mr. Feldman.
+That's who I married&mdash;Miss
+Birdie Goldblatt."</p>
+
+<p>Feldman sat back in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of all the unfatherly
+brutes," he said, "to shut down on
+his own daughter's husband!"</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+to-day yet the old man don't know
+nothing about it."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Feldman
+asked. "Why wouldn't he
+know his own daughter was married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because she's living home yet,"
+Philip replied, and "I can't persuade
+her to go housekeeping,
+neither."</p>
+
+<p>Feldman frowned for a moment
+and then he struck the desk with
+his fist.</p>
+
+<p>"By jiminy!" he shouted,
+"you've got the old man by the
+whiskers!"</p>
+
+<p>It was now Philip's turn to ask
+what Feldman meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," the latter explained,
+"your wife's inchoate right of dower
+is still outstanding."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's where you make a big
+mistake, Mr. Feldman," Philip
+corrected. "My Birdie is a neat
+dresser and never so much as a
+pin out of place."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand," Feldman
+continued. "As soon as
+Birdie and you got married she
+took an interest in your property."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure she took an interest in my
+property," Philip assented. "Why,
+if it wouldn't be for her I wouldn't
+know nothing about this here sale
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"But I mean that as soon as she
+married you she became vested
+with the right to receive the rents
+of a third of that property during
+her lifetime as soon as you died,"
+said Feldman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, we won't worry about
+that," Philip said with a deprecatory
+wave of his hand, "because,
+in the first place, that property is
+pretty near vacant and don't bring
+in enough rents to pay the taxes,
+and, in the second place, I'm still
+good and healthy and I wouldn't
+die for a long time yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what's the use!" Feldman
+cried. "What I mean is that they
+can't foreclose those second mortgages
+unless they make Birdie a
+party to the suit and serve her
+with the summons; so, all you have
+to do to stop the sale is to go down
+to the salesroom and, when the
+auctioneer starts to ask for bids,
+get up and tell 'em all about it.
+Why, they'll have to begin their
+suit all over again."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But," Philip protested, "if I
+tell 'em all about it the old man
+will throw Birdie out of the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on!" Feldman broke in.
+"You mustn't tell them you're
+married to Birdie. Just tell them
+you're married, and let them find
+out your wife's name for themselves.
+Although, to be sure, that won't
+take long, for the record of marriage
+licenses at the city hall will
+show it."</p>
+
+<p>"License nothing!" Philip cried.
+"We didn't get no license at the city
+hall. We got married by a justice
+of the peace in Jersey City."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine!" Feldman exclaimed, his
+professional ethics thrown to the
+winds. "That'll keep 'em guessing
+as long as you want."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All I want is a month, and by
+that time I can raise the money
+and fix the whole thing up," Margolius
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>Feldman looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Chase yourself," he said; "it's
+a quarter of twelve, and the foreclosure
+sale begins at noon."</p>
+
+<hr class="r15" />
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<p>On the rostrum of an auctioneer
+in the Vesey Street salesroom stood
+Eleazer Levy in weighty conversation
+with Miles M. Scully, the
+referee in foreclosure. Scully's
+brow was furrowed into a thousand
+earned wrinkles, and the little knot
+of real-estate brokers who regularly
+attend foreclosure sales gazed reverently
+on the two advocates.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And here was this guy," Levy
+concluded, "with nothing but a
+pair of sixes all the time."</p>
+
+<p>"But in a table-stakes game,"
+Scully murmured, "you make a
+sight more if you don't butt into
+every pot. If you think you're
+topped lay 'em down. That's
+what I do, and it pays."</p>
+
+<p>They were waiting for the auctioneer
+to appear, and Goldblatt
+hung around the edge of the crowd
+and gazed anxiously at them. He
+had heard that morning of the proposed
+street widening and wanted
+the sale to go through without a
+hitch. At length the auctioneer
+arrived and the clerk read off the
+notice of sale in a monotonous
+gabble just as Philip elbowed his
+way through the crowd.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, then, gentlemen," the
+auctioneer announced pompously,
+"the four parcels will be sold separately.
+Each is subject to a first
+mortgage of twenty thousand dollars
+and is otherwise free and clear
+except the taxes. The amount of
+taxes is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, there!" Philip cried at
+this juncture. "I got something
+to say, too."</p>
+
+<p>The auctioneer paused and fixed
+Philip with what was intended to
+be a withering look.</p>
+
+<p>"Put that man out!" the auctioneer
+called to one of the attendants.</p>
+
+<p>"You could put me out," Philip
+yelled, "if you want to, but you
+couldn't put my wife out, because
+she ain't been served with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+summons and complaint in the
+first place, and she ain't here in the
+second place."</p>
+
+<p>Goldblatt turned pale and
+started for the rostrum, while the
+auctioneer motioned the attendant
+to hold off for a minute.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a married man?" the
+auctioneer asked Levy.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a faker," Levy replied.
+"Go ahead with the sale."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I a faker?" Philip yelled,
+holding up his left hand. "Well,
+look at that there ring."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled it off with an effort and
+handed it to the auctioneer.</p>
+
+<p>"Look inside," he said. And,
+sure enough, the inner side bore
+the inscription: "B. G. to P. M.,
+10-20-'09." Goldblatt looked at
+it, too; but B. G. meant nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+to him and he handed it back to
+the auctioneer.</p>
+
+<p>"That's only a scheme what he's
+trying to work it," he said. "Give
+him back the ring and go ahead
+with the sale."</p>
+
+<p>"One moment," said Miles M.
+Scully. "I'm the referee here,
+and I ain't going to take no such
+chance as that. I'm going to adjoin
+this here sale one week and investigate
+what this here guy says in the
+meantime."</p>
+
+<p>Forthwith, the auctioneer announced
+a week's adjournment of
+the four sales, and Philip resumed
+his wedding ring with a parting
+diabolical grin at Goldblatt, and
+left the auction-room. He went to
+the nearest telephone pay station
+and rang up the Goldblatt residence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+but for over half an hour
+he received only Central's assurance
+that as soon as there was an
+answer she would call him.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Central," he protested,
+"there's got to be somebody there.
+They can't all be out."</p>
+
+<p>And Philip was right. There
+were two people sitting in the front
+parlour of the Goldblatt residence,
+and another and more interested
+person stooped in the back parlour,
+with her ear to the crack of the
+sliding doors which divided the two
+rooms. The telephone bell trilled
+impatiently at brief intervals, but
+all three were oblivious to its
+appeal; for the two persons in the
+front parlour were engaged in
+conversation of an earnest character,
+and the person in the rear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+room would not have missed a word
+of it for all the telephones in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Fannie," said one of the
+two persons, "I come back to you,
+anyhow, and I come back for
+good."</p>
+
+<p>He placed his arms around her
+ample waist.</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you, Fannie," he concluded,
+"them dollar-a-day American-plan
+hotels in the northern-tier
+counties is nothing but poison to a
+feller.  I am pretty near starved."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you say so at first?"
+Fannie replied, rising from the
+couch where she had been sitting
+with Feigenbaum. "I got some
+fine <i>gef&uuml;llte Fische</i> in the ice-box."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Birdie answered the
+'phone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hallo!" came a voice from the
+other end of the wire. "Where was
+you all the time? I got some
+good news for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I've got some good news for
+you, too," Birdie replied. "Fannie
+and Mr. Feigenbaum are engaged."</p>
+
+<hr class="r15" />
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<p>Elkan Goldblatt usually arrived
+home at seven o'clock to find
+his dinner smoking on the table.
+His daughter Fannie always attended
+to the carving, but on the
+night of the foreclosure sale it was
+Birdie who presided at the head
+of the board.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Fannie?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She went out to dinner," Birdie
+explained.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Elkan nodded and lapsed into
+gloomy silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now?" Birdie
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"That lowlife Margolius," he
+said, "what do you think from that
+loafer? He goes to work and gets
+married."</p>
+
+<p>Birdie gasped and turned white,
+all of which her father mistook for
+symptoms of astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't that a loafer for you?"
+he continued. "All the time he
+hangs around here, and then he
+goes to work and gets married."</p>
+
+<p>"Who did he marry?" Birdie
+asked innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"A question!" Goldblatt exclaimed.
+"Who can tell it who a
+lowlife like him would marry?"</p>
+
+<p>Birdie tossed her head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He ain't no lowlife just because
+he gets married," she retorted.
+"What's more, any girl would be
+glad to get a good-looking, decent
+young feller like Philip Margolius."</p>
+
+<p>Goldblatt laid down his knife and
+fork.</p>
+
+<p>"You are crazy in the head," he
+said. "Why should you stick up
+for a young feller what comes
+around here and upsets my whole
+house? <i>You</i> I don't care about,
+because you could always get a
+husband; but Fannie&mdash;that's different
+again. It ain't enough for
+that loafer that he disappointed
+her himself, but he also got to
+bring around here that one-eyed
+feller&mdash;another such lowlife as
+Margolius&mdash;and he also disappoints<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+Fannie. That feller Margolius
+is a dawg, Birdie, believe
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Birdie rose from her seat and
+threw her napkin on to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't sit here and listen to
+such talk," she cried and ran out
+of the room. For a moment Goldblatt
+essayed to finish his dinner,
+and then he, too, rose and followed
+Birdie. He found her weeping on
+the parlour lounge.</p>
+
+<p>"Birdie!" he cried. "Birdiechen,
+what are you taking on so for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have you say such
+things about Ph-Ph&mdash;Feigenbaum,"
+she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Because Mr. Feigenbaum came
+here this afternoon and proposed
+to Fannie," she explained to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+father, "and they're downtown
+now getting the ring from a friend
+of his what keeps a jewellery store
+on Grand Street."</p>
+
+<p>Goldblatt sat down heavily on
+the lounge and wiped his forehead.
+For ten minutes he sat motionless
+in the shrouded gloom of that front
+parlour before he could realize his
+daughter's good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," he said finally,
+"when a feller's got six stores you
+could easy excuse him one eye."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be ashamed to
+talk that way," Birdie cried. "Mr.
+Feigenbaum is a decent business
+man, and if it wouldn't be for
+Philip&mdash;Philip Margolius&mdash;Fannie
+would of lived and died an old
+maid."</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture came a ring at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+the bell and the sound of voices
+in the hall. It was Fannie and her
+fianc&eacute;, who had returned from
+Grand Street, and the next moment
+Goldblatt clasped his affianced
+daughter in his arms and bestowed
+on her great kisses that fairly resounded
+down the block. Next he
+grabbed Feigenbaum's hand and
+shook it up and down.</p>
+
+<p>"The happiest day what I ever
+lived," he cried, slapping his new
+son-in-law on the back. For almost
+a quarter of an hour Fannie
+and Birdie mingled their tears with
+their father's embraces, and in
+the midst of the excitement the
+bell rang again. When the maid
+opened the street door some one
+inquired for Mr. Goldblatt in a
+barytone voice whose familiar timbre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+chilled into silence the joyful
+uproar.</p>
+
+<p>"Margolius!" Goldblatt hissed.
+He started for the hall with blood
+in his eye, when Feigenbaum seized
+him by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Goldblatt," he said, "for
+my sake don't make no fuss with
+Margolius. He's a friend of mine,
+and if it wouldn't be for him Fannie
+and me would never of met already."</p>
+
+<p>As Philip entered the darkened
+front parlour there was a silence so
+profound that he believed the room
+to be empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me," he cried when he
+recognized the assembled company.
+"I thought Mr. Goldblatt
+was alone."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to his father-in-law.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Goldblatt, could I speak to
+you for a minute by yourself?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Goldblatt coughed impressively.</p>
+
+<p>"Margolius," he announced, "if
+you got anything to say to me, say
+it right here. I ain't got no private
+business with you."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Philip replied cheerfully.
+"I come here to ask you
+how much would you take it for
+them second mortgages what you
+hold on my Two Hundred and
+Sixty-fourth Street property?"</p>
+
+<p>Goldblatt waved his hand
+haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"You come to the wrong party,
+Margolius," he said. "Because I
+just made up my mind to something.
+I made up my mind that
+because Mr. Feigenbaum is engaged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+to my Fannie I will give her
+them mortgages as a marriage portion.
+So you should ask Feigenbaum
+that question, not me."</p>
+
+<p>While Philip turned pale at this
+announcement, Feigenbaum grew
+positively crimson.</p>
+
+<p>"Looky here, Goldblatt," he
+protested to his proposed father-in-law;
+"I don't want you should
+unload them second mortgages on
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you,
+Feigenbaum?" Goldblatt retorted.
+"Them second mortgages is as
+good as gold. Only thing is they
+got to be foreclosed against Margolius'
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>"His wife!" Feigenbaum and
+Fannie cried with one voice, for
+Birdie had kept her secret well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Goldblatt replied, "his
+wife. That lowlife has got a wife.
+But who or what she is nobody
+don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on, Goldblatt!" cried a
+voice from the hall. "There's
+somebody that does know."</p>
+
+<p>The next moment a short, stout
+person entered the parlour. It was
+Eleazer Levy, who had rung the
+bell and had been admitted to the
+house unnoticed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Margolius," he said, "you
+thought you could fool an old
+practitioner like me. I seen you
+didn't get out no license in this
+county, so I hiked over to Jersey
+City and, sure enough, I spotted
+you."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to Birdie.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Margolius," he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+"here's four copies of the supplemental
+summons and amended
+complaint in the foreclosure suits
+of Goldblatt vs. Margolius, actions
+numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Goldblatt
+cried.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," Levy answered, "that
+your daughter Birdie married
+Philip Margolius in Jersey City on
+the twentieth of October last."</p>
+
+<p>Elkan Goldblatt collapsed in the
+nearest chair, while Feigenbaum
+ran downstairs for the bottle of
+schnapps. At length Goldblatt
+was restored.</p>
+
+<p>"So, Margolius," he croaked,
+"you are a thief, too. You steal
+my daughter on me?"</p>
+
+<p>"That ain't here nor there,"
+Margolius said with his arm around<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+Birdie's waist and her head on his
+shoulder. "That ain't here nor
+there. How much will you take
+it now for a satisfaction piece of
+them mortgages?"</p>
+
+<p>Goldblatt looked at Feigenbaum,
+who returned his glance unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>"For a marriage portion," Feigenbaum
+declared, "second mortgages
+is nix."</p>
+
+<p>There was an embarrassing silence,
+and finally Goldblatt cleared
+his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Margolius," he said;
+"you married my Birdie, and I suppose
+I got to stand for it, so you
+can take them four second mortgages
+and keep 'em as a marriage
+portion yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Birdie seized her father around
+the neck and kissed him on the ear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then we are forgiven? Ain't
+it?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you are forgiven," Goldblatt
+said. "Only, Margolius has
+got to pay Levy's costs and disbursements."</p>
+
+<p>"And the referee's fees and the
+auctioneer's fees," Levy added.</p>
+
+<p>"I am agreeable," Philip replied.</p>
+
+<p>Levy turned and beamed a benediction
+on his client's reunited
+family. "I wish you all joy," he
+said.</p>
+
+<div class="center extraspacetop extraspacebot">THE END.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/endpaper03.png" width="400" height="585" alt="Endpaper" title="Endpaper" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquote center extraspacetop">THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS <br />
+GARDEN CITY, N. Y.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+</div>
+<hr class="r65" />
+<div class="blockquote center extraspacetop"><b>Transcriber Notes:</b> <br />
+
+Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired. </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Object: matrimony, by Montague Glass
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+</pre>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Object: matrimony, by Montague Glass
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Object: matrimony
+
+Author: Montague Glass
+
+Release Date: September 8, 2011 [EBook #37360]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OBJECT: MATRIMONY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianna Adair, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Object: Matrimony
+
+
+[Illustration: "DID YOU EVER SUFFER FROM STUMMICK TROUBLE?"]
+
+
+          OBJECT:
+        MATRIMONY
+
+            by
+        MONTAGUE
+          GLASS
+
+    GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+          1912
+
+
+
+
+    _Copyright, 1909, by_
+  THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+    _Copyright, 1912, by_
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+
+_All rights reserved including that of translation into foreign
+languages, including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+Object: Matrimony
+
+BY MONTAGUE GLASS
+
+
+
+
+"Real estate!" Philip Margolius cried bitterly; "that's a business for a
+business man! If a feller's in the clothing business and it comes bad
+times, Mr. Feldman, he can sell it his goods at cost and live anyhow;
+but if a feller's in the real-estate business, Mr. Feldman, and it comes
+bad times, he can't not only sell his houses, but he couldn't give 'em
+away yet, and when the second mortgage forecloses he gets deficiency
+judgments against him."
+
+"Why don't you do this?" Mr. Feldman suggested. "Why don't you go to the
+second mortgagee and tell him you'll convey the houses to him in
+satisfaction of the mortgage? Those houses will never bring even the
+amount of the first mortgage in these times, and surely he would rather
+have the houses than a deficiency judgment against you."
+
+"That's what I told him a hundred times. Believe me, Mr. Feldman, I used
+hours and hours of the best salesmanship on that feller," Margolius
+answered, "and all he says is that he wouldn't have to pay no interest,
+insurance and taxes on a deficiency judgment, while a house what stands
+vacant you got to all the time be paying out money."
+
+"But as soon as they put the subway through," Mr. Feldman continued,
+"that property around Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street and Heidenfeld
+Avenue will go up tremendously."
+
+"Sure I know," Margolius agreed; "but when a feller's got four double
+flat-houses and every flat yet vacant, futures don't cut no ice. Them
+tenants couldn't ride on futures, Mr. Feldman; and so, with the nearest
+trolley car ten blocks away, I am up against a dead proposition."
+
+"Wouldn't he give you a year's extension?" Mr. Feldman asked.
+
+"He wouldn't give me positively nothing," Margolius replied hopelessly.
+"That feller's a regular Skylark. He wants his pound of meat every time,
+Mr. Feldman. So I guess you got to think up some scheme for me that I
+should beat him out. Them mortgages falls due in ten days, Mr. Feldman,
+and we got to act quick."
+
+Mr. Feldman frowned judicially. In New York, if an attorney for a realty
+owner knows his business and neglects his professional ethics he can so
+obstruct an action to foreclose a mortgage as to make Jarndyce vs.
+Jarndyce look like a summary proceeding. But Henry D. Feldman was a
+conscientious practitioner, and never did anything that might bring him
+before the grievance committee of the Bar Association. Moreover, he was
+a power in the Democratic organization and right in line for a Supreme
+Court judgeship, and so it behooved him to be careful if not ethical.
+
+"Why don't you go and see Goldblatt again, and then if you can't move
+him I'll see what I can do for you?" Feldman suggested.
+
+"But, Mr. Feldman," Margolius protested, "I told it you it ain't no use.
+Goldblatt hates me worser as poison."
+
+Feldman leaned back in his low chair with one arm thrown over the back,
+after the fashion of Judge Blatchford's portrait in the United States
+District Courtroom.
+
+"See here, Margolius: what's the real trouble between you and
+Goldblatt?" he said. "If you're going to get my advice in this matter
+you will have to tell me the whole truth. _Falsus in uno, falsus in
+omnibus_, you know."
+
+"You make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Margolius replied. "It ain't
+nothing like that, and whoever told it you is got another think coming.
+The trouble was about his daughter Fannie. You could bring a horse a
+pail of water, Mr. Feldman, but no one could make the horse drink it if
+he don't want to, and that's the way it was with me. Friedman, the
+Schatchen, took me up to see Goldblatt's daughter Fannie, and I assure
+you I ain't exaggeration a bit when I tell you she's got a moustache
+what wouldn't go bad with a dago barber yet."
+
+"Why, I thought Goldblatt's daughter was a pretty good looker," Feldman
+exclaimed.
+
+"That's Birdie Goldblatt," Margolius replied, blushing. "But
+Fannie--that's a different proposition, Mr. Feldman. Well, Goldblatt
+gives me all kinds of inducements; but I ain't that kind, Mr. Feldman.
+If I would marry I would marry for love, and it wouldn't make no
+difference to me if the girl would have it, say, for example, only two
+thousand dollars. I would marry her anyway."
+
+"Very commendable," Mr. Feldman murmured.
+
+"But Fannie Goldblatt--that is somebody a young feller wouldn't
+consider, not if her hair hung with diamonds, Mr. Feldman," Margolius
+continued. "Although I got to admit I did go up to Goldblatt's house a
+great many times, because, supposing she does got a moustache, she could
+cook _gefuellte Fische_ and _Fleischkugeln_ better as Delmonico's
+already. And then Miss Birdie Goldblatt----"
+
+He faltered and blushed again, while Feldman nodded sympathetically.
+
+"Anyhow, what's the use talking?" Margolius concluded. "The old man gets
+sore on me, and when Marks Henochstein offers him the second mortgages
+on them Heidenfeld Avenue houses it was yet boom-time in the Bronix, and
+it looked good to Goldblatt; so he made Henochstein give him a big
+allowance, and he bought 'em. And now when he's got me where he wants
+me I can kiss myself good-bye with them houses."
+
+He rose to his feet and put on his gloves, for Philip was what is
+popularly known as a swell dresser. Indeed, there was no
+smarter-appearing salesman in the entire cloak and suit trade, nor was
+there a salesman more ingratiating in manner and hence more successful
+with lady buyers.
+
+"If the worser comes to the worst," he said, "I will go through
+bankruptcy. I ain't got nothing but them houses, anyway." He fingered
+the two-and-a-half-carat solitaire in his scarf to find out if it were
+still there. "And they couldn't get my salary in advance, so that's what
+I'll do."
+
+He shook hands with Mr. Feldman.
+
+"You could send me a bill for your advice, Mr. Feldman," he said.
+
+"That's all right," Feldman replied as he ushered his client out of the
+office. "I'll add it to my fee in the bankruptcy matter."
+
+
+
+
+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 cafe.
+
+"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."
+
+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 _gefuellte 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 _gefuellte 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 _gefuellte 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.
+
+"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."
+
+"What do you mean?" Feldman asked. "Why wouldn't he know his own
+daughter was married?"
+
+"Because she's living home yet," Philip replied, and "I can't persuade
+her to go housekeeping, neither."
+
+Feldman frowned for a moment and then he struck the desk with his fist.
+
+"By jiminy!" he shouted, "you've got the old man by the whiskers!"
+
+It was now Philip's turn to ask what Feldman meant.
+
+"Why," the latter explained, "your wife's inchoate right of dower is
+still outstanding."
+
+"That's where you make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Philip corrected.
+"My Birdie is a neat dresser and never so much as a pin out of place."
+
+"You don't understand," Feldman continued. "As soon as Birdie and you
+got married she took an interest in your property."
+
+"Sure she took an interest in my property," Philip assented. "Why, if it
+wouldn't be for her I wouldn't know nothing about this here sale
+to-day."
+
+"But I mean that as soon as she married you she became vested with the
+right to receive the rents of a third of that property during her
+lifetime as soon as you died," said Feldman.
+
+"Well, we won't worry about that," Philip said with a deprecatory wave
+of his hand, "because, in the first place, that property is pretty near
+vacant and don't bring in enough rents to pay the taxes, and, in the
+second place, I'm still good and healthy and I wouldn't die for a long
+time yet."
+
+"Oh, what's the use!" Feldman cried. "What I mean is that they can't
+foreclose those second mortgages unless they make Birdie a party to the
+suit and serve her with the summons; so, all you have to do to stop the
+sale is to go down to the salesroom and, when the auctioneer starts to
+ask for bids, get up and tell 'em all about it. Why, they'll have to
+begin their suit all over again."
+
+"But," Philip protested, "if I tell 'em all about it the old man will
+throw Birdie out of the house."
+
+"Hold on!" Feldman broke in. "You mustn't tell them you're married to
+Birdie. Just tell them you're married, and let them find out your wife's
+name for themselves. Although, to be sure, that won't take long, for the
+record of marriage licenses at the city hall will show it."
+
+"License nothing!" Philip cried. "We didn't get no license at the city
+hall. We got married by a justice of the peace in Jersey City."
+
+"Fine!" Feldman exclaimed, his professional ethics thrown to the winds.
+"That'll keep 'em guessing as long as you want."
+
+"All I want is a month, and by that time I can raise the money and fix
+the whole thing up," Margolius replied.
+
+Feldman looked at his watch.
+
+"Chase yourself," he said; "it's a quarter of twelve, and the
+foreclosure sale begins at noon."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+On the rostrum of an auctioneer in the Vesey Street salesroom stood
+Eleazer Levy in weighty conversation with Miles M. Scully, the referee
+in foreclosure. Scully's brow was furrowed into a thousand earned
+wrinkles, and the little knot of real-estate brokers who regularly
+attend foreclosure sales gazed reverently on the two advocates.
+
+"And here was this guy," Levy concluded, "with nothing but a pair of
+sixes all the time."
+
+"But in a table-stakes game," Scully murmured, "you make a sight more if
+you don't butt into every pot. If you think you're topped lay 'em down.
+That's what I do, and it pays."
+
+They were waiting for the auctioneer to appear, and Goldblatt hung
+around the edge of the crowd and gazed anxiously at them. He had heard
+that morning of the proposed street widening and wanted the sale to go
+through without a hitch. At length the auctioneer arrived and the clerk
+read off the notice of sale in a monotonous gabble just as Philip
+elbowed his way through the crowd.
+
+"Now, then, gentlemen," the auctioneer announced pompously, "the four
+parcels will be sold separately. Each is subject to a first mortgage of
+twenty thousand dollars and is otherwise free and clear except the
+taxes. The amount of taxes is----"
+
+"Hey, there!" Philip cried at this juncture. "I got something to say,
+too."
+
+The auctioneer paused and fixed Philip with what was intended to be a
+withering look.
+
+"Put that man out!" the auctioneer called to one of the attendants.
+
+"You could put me out," Philip yelled, "if you want to, but you couldn't
+put my wife out, because she ain't been served with the summons and
+complaint in the first place, and she ain't here in the second place."
+
+Goldblatt turned pale and started for the rostrum, while the auctioneer
+motioned the attendant to hold off for a minute.
+
+"Is he a married man?" the auctioneer asked Levy.
+
+"He's a faker," Levy replied. "Go ahead with the sale."
+
+"Am I a faker?" Philip yelled, holding up his left hand. "Well, look at
+that there ring."
+
+He pulled it off with an effort and handed it to the auctioneer.
+
+"Look inside," he said. And, sure enough, the inner side bore the
+inscription: "B. G. to P. M., 10-20-'09." Goldblatt looked at it, too;
+but B. G. meant nothing to him and he handed it back to the auctioneer.
+
+"That's only a scheme what he's trying to work it," he said. "Give him
+back the ring and go ahead with the sale."
+
+"One moment," said Miles M. Scully. "I'm the referee here, and I ain't
+going to take no such chance as that. I'm going to adjoin this here sale
+one week and investigate what this here guy says in the meantime."
+
+Forthwith, the auctioneer announced a week's adjournment of the four
+sales, and Philip resumed his wedding ring with a parting diabolical
+grin at Goldblatt, and left the auction-room. He went to the nearest
+telephone pay station and rang up the Goldblatt residence, but for over
+half an hour he received only Central's assurance that as soon as there
+was an answer she would call him.
+
+"But, Central," he protested, "there's got to be somebody there. They
+can't all be out."
+
+And Philip was right. There were two people sitting in the front parlour
+of the Goldblatt residence, and another and more interested person
+stooped in the back parlour, with her ear to the crack of the sliding
+doors which divided the two rooms. The telephone bell trilled
+impatiently at brief intervals, but all three were oblivious to its
+appeal; for the two persons in the front parlour were engaged in
+conversation of an earnest character, and the person in the rear room
+would not have missed a word of it for all the telephones in the world.
+
+"Yes, Fannie," said one of the two persons, "I come back to you, anyhow,
+and I come back for good."
+
+He placed his arms around her ample waist.
+
+"I assure you, Fannie," he concluded, "them dollar-a-day American-plan
+hotels in the northern-tier counties is nothing but poison to a feller.
+I am pretty near starved."
+
+"Why didn't you say so at first?" Fannie replied, rising from the couch
+where she had been sitting with Feigenbaum. "I got some fine _gefuellte
+Fische_ in the ice-box."
+
+Whereupon Birdie answered the 'phone.
+
+"Hallo!" came a voice from the other end of the wire. "Where was you all
+the time? I got some good news for you."
+
+"I've got some good news for you, too," Birdie replied. "Fannie and Mr.
+Feigenbaum are engaged."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Elkan Goldblatt usually arrived home at seven o'clock to find his dinner
+smoking on the table. His daughter Fannie always attended to the
+carving, but on the night of the foreclosure sale it was Birdie who
+presided at the head of the board.
+
+"Where's Fannie?" he asked.
+
+"She went out to dinner," Birdie explained.
+
+Elkan nodded and lapsed into gloomy silence.
+
+"What's the matter now?" Birdie inquired.
+
+"That lowlife Margolius," he said, "what do you think from that loafer?
+He goes to work and gets married."
+
+Birdie gasped and turned white, all of which her father mistook for
+symptoms of astonishment.
+
+"Ain't that a loafer for you?" he continued. "All the time he hangs
+around here, and then he goes to work and gets married."
+
+"Who did he marry?" Birdie asked innocently.
+
+"A question!" Goldblatt exclaimed. "Who can tell it who a lowlife like
+him would marry?"
+
+Birdie tossed her head.
+
+"He ain't no lowlife just because he gets married," she retorted.
+"What's more, any girl would be glad to get a good-looking, decent young
+feller like Philip Margolius."
+
+Goldblatt laid down his knife and fork.
+
+"You are crazy in the head," he said. "Why should you stick up for a
+young feller what comes around here and upsets my whole house? _You_ I
+don't care about, because you could always get a husband; but
+Fannie--that's different again. It ain't enough for that loafer that he
+disappointed her himself, but he also got to bring around here that
+one-eyed feller--another such lowlife as Margolius--and he also
+disappoints Fannie. That feller Margolius is a dawg, Birdie, believe
+me."
+
+Birdie rose from her seat and threw her napkin on to the floor.
+
+"I won't sit here and listen to such talk," she cried and ran out of the
+room. For a moment Goldblatt essayed to finish his dinner, and then he,
+too, rose and followed Birdie. He found her weeping on the parlour
+lounge.
+
+"Birdie!" he cried. "Birdiechen, what are you taking on so for?"
+
+"I won't have you say such things about Ph-Ph--Feigenbaum," she sobbed.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because Mr. Feigenbaum came here this afternoon and proposed to
+Fannie," she explained to her father, "and they're downtown now getting
+the ring from a friend of his what keeps a jewellery store on Grand
+Street."
+
+Goldblatt sat down heavily on the lounge and wiped his forehead. For ten
+minutes he sat motionless in the shrouded gloom of that front parlour
+before he could realize his daughter's good fortune.
+
+"After all," he said finally, "when a feller's got six stores you could
+easy excuse him one eye."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed to talk that way," Birdie cried. "Mr.
+Feigenbaum is a decent business man, and if it wouldn't be for
+Philip--Philip Margolius--Fannie would of lived and died an old maid."
+
+At this juncture came a ring at the bell and the sound of voices in the
+hall. It was Fannie and her fiance, who had returned from Grand Street,
+and the next moment Goldblatt clasped his affianced daughter in his arms
+and bestowed on her great kisses that fairly resounded down the block.
+Next he grabbed Feigenbaum's hand and shook it up and down.
+
+"The happiest day what I ever lived," he cried, slapping his new
+son-in-law on the back. For almost a quarter of an hour Fannie and
+Birdie mingled their tears with their father's embraces, and in the
+midst of the excitement the bell rang again. When the maid opened the
+street door some one inquired for Mr. Goldblatt in a barytone voice
+whose familiar timbre chilled into silence the joyful uproar.
+
+"Margolius!" Goldblatt hissed. He started for the hall with blood in his
+eye, when Feigenbaum seized him by the arm.
+
+"Mr. Goldblatt," he said, "for my sake don't make no fuss with
+Margolius. He's a friend of mine, and if it wouldn't be for him Fannie
+and me would never of met already."
+
+As Philip entered the darkened front parlour there was a silence so
+profound that he believed the room to be empty.
+
+"Excuse me," he cried when he recognized the assembled company. "I
+thought Mr. Goldblatt was alone."
+
+He turned to his father-in-law.
+
+"Mr. Goldblatt, could I speak to you for a minute by yourself?" he
+asked.
+
+Goldblatt coughed impressively.
+
+"Margolius," he announced, "if you got anything to say to me, say it
+right here. I ain't got no private business with you."
+
+"All right," Philip replied cheerfully. "I come here to ask you how much
+would you take it for them second mortgages what you hold on my Two
+Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street property?"
+
+Goldblatt waved his hand haughtily.
+
+"You come to the wrong party, Margolius," he said. "Because I just made
+up my mind to something. I made up my mind that because Mr. Feigenbaum
+is engaged to my Fannie I will give her them mortgages as a marriage
+portion. So you should ask Feigenbaum that question, not me."
+
+While Philip turned pale at this announcement, Feigenbaum grew
+positively crimson.
+
+"Looky here, Goldblatt," he protested to his proposed father-in-law; "I
+don't want you should unload them second mortgages on me."
+
+"What's the matter with you, Feigenbaum?" Goldblatt retorted. "Them
+second mortgages is as good as gold. Only thing is they got to be
+foreclosed against Margolius' wife."
+
+"His wife!" Feigenbaum and Fannie cried with one voice, for Birdie had
+kept her secret well.
+
+"Yes," Goldblatt replied, "his wife. That lowlife has got a wife. But
+who or what she is nobody don't know."
+
+"Hold on, Goldblatt!" cried a voice from the hall. "There's somebody
+that does know."
+
+The next moment a short, stout person entered the parlour. It was
+Eleazer Levy, who had rung the bell and had been admitted to the house
+unnoticed.
+
+"Yes, Margolius," he said, "you thought you could fool an old
+practitioner like me. I seen you didn't get out no license in this
+county, so I hiked over to Jersey City and, sure enough, I spotted you."
+
+He turned to Birdie.
+
+"Mrs. Margolius," he said, "here's four copies of the supplemental
+summons and amended complaint in the foreclosure suits of Goldblatt vs.
+Margolius, actions numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4."
+
+"What do you mean?" Goldblatt cried.
+
+"I mean," Levy answered, "that your daughter Birdie married Philip
+Margolius in Jersey City on the twentieth of October last."
+
+Elkan Goldblatt collapsed in the nearest chair, while Feigenbaum ran
+downstairs for the bottle of schnapps. At length Goldblatt was restored.
+
+"So, Margolius," he croaked, "you are a thief, too. You steal my
+daughter on me?"
+
+"That ain't here nor there," Margolius said with his arm around
+Birdie's waist and her head on his shoulder. "That ain't here nor there.
+How much will you take it now for a satisfaction piece of them
+mortgages?"
+
+Goldblatt looked at Feigenbaum, who returned his glance unmoved.
+
+"For a marriage portion," Feigenbaum declared, "second mortgages is
+nix."
+
+There was an embarrassing silence, and finally Goldblatt cleared his
+throat.
+
+"All right, Margolius," he said; "you married my Birdie, and I suppose I
+got to stand for it, so you can take them four second mortgages and keep
+'em as a marriage portion yourself."
+
+Birdie seized her father around the neck and kissed him on the ear.
+
+"Then we are forgiven? Ain't it?" she cried.
+
+"Sure you are forgiven," Goldblatt said. "Only, Margolius has got to pay
+Levy's costs and disbursements."
+
+"And the referee's fees and the auctioneer's fees," Levy added.
+
+"I am agreeable," Philip replied.
+
+Levy turned and beamed a benediction on his client's reunited family. "I
+wish you all joy," he said.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Transcriber Notes:
+
+  Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Object: matrimony, by Montague Glass
+
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