That Elkan Lubliner's progress in business had not kept pace with his social achievements was a source of much disappointment to both Mrs. Lubliner and himself; for though the firm of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company was still rated seventy-five thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars—credit good—Elkan and Mrs. Lubliner moved in the social orbit of no less a personage than of Max Koblin, the Raincoat King, whose credit soared triumphantly among the A's and B's of old-established commission houses.
Indeed it was a party at Max Koblin's house that evening which caused Elkan to leave his place of business at half-past five; and when Mrs. Lubliner and he sallied forth from the gilt and porphyry hallway of their apartment dwelling they were fittingly arrayed to meet Max's guests, none of whom catered to the popular-price trade of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company.
"Why didn't you told him we are getting next week paid off for five thousand dollars a second mortgage?" Yetta said, continuing a conversation begun at dinner that evening.
"I did told him," Elkan insisted; "but what is the use talking to a couple of old-timers like them?"
Yetta sniffed contemptuously with the impatience of youth at the foibles of senility, as exemplified by the doddering Philip Scheikowitz, aged forty-five, and the valetudinarian Marcus Polatkin, whose hair, albeit unfrosted, had been blighted and in part swept away by the vicissitudes of forty-two winters.
"You can't learn an old dawg young tricks," Elkan declared, "and we might just as well make up our minds to it, Yetta, we would never compete with such highgrade concerns like B. Gans oder Schwefel & Zucker."
They walked over two blocks in silence and then Elkan broke out anew.
"I tell you," he said, "I am sick and tired of it. B. Gans talks all the time about selling this big Macher and that big Macher, and him and Mr. Schwefel gets telling about what a millionaire like Kammerman says to him the other day, or what he says to Mandelberger, of Chicago, y'understand—and I couldn't say nothing! If I would commence to tell 'em what I says to such customers of ours like One-Eye Feigenbaum oder H. Margonin, of Bridgetown, understand me, they would laugh me in my face yet."
Yetta pressed his arm consolingly as they ascended the stoop of Max Koblin's house on Mount Morris Park West, and two minutes later they entered the front parlour of that luxurious residence.
"And do you know what he says to me?" a penetrating barytone voice announced as they came in. "He says to me, 'Benson,' he says, 'I've been putting on musical shows now for fifteen years, and an idee like that comes from a genius already. There's a fortune in it!'"