"In Mr. Schwartz's apartment houses," I continued, while Bunch kicked my shins under the table, "you will find self-freezing refrigerators and self-leaving servants. All the rooms are light rooms, when you light the gas. Two of his houses overlook the Park and all of them overlook the building laws. The floors are made of concrete so that if you want to bring a horse in the parlor you can do so without kicking off the plaster in the flat below. Every room has folding doors, and when the water pipes burst the janitor has folding arms."
"Quit your joshing, John! you'll embarrass Mr. Schwartz," laughed Bunch somewhat nervously, but Ikey's grin never flickered.
"Is Mr. Schwartz deaf and dumb?" Peaches whispered.
"Intermittently so," I whispered back; "sometimes for hours at a time he cannot speak a word and can hear only the loudest tones."
Aunt Martha heard my comment on Ikey's infirmity and was about to become intensely sympathetic and tell him how her brother's wife was cured when Bunch interrupted loudly by asking after Uncle Peter's health.
"Never better," answered Aunt Martha. "He has spent all the morning arranging the program of dancing for our little party. He insists upon having the Virginia Reel, the old-fashioned waltz, the Polka and the Lancers. Uncle Peter has a perfect horror of these modern dances and Peaches and Alice and I share it with him." Then she turned to Ikey: "Don't you think these modern dances are perfectly disgusting?"
Poor Ikey looked reproachfully at the old lady a second, then with gathering astonishment he slid silently off the chair and struck the floor with a bump.
Aunt Martha was so rattled over this unexpected effort on Mr. Schwartz's part that she upset her coffee and Ikey got most of it in the back of the neck.
When peace was finally restored the old lady came to the surface with an envelope which had been lying on the table near her plate.
"Is this your letter, John?" she asked, and then, arranging her glasses, read with great deliberation, "Mr. I. Schwartz, Tango Teacher, care of Kumearly and Staylates' Cabaret, New York."