"They pay 'em so much a night," Milton explained.
"Well, in that case, Mr. Jassy," Elkan continued, "all I could say is if I would got working in my place half a dozen fellers which I am paying by the day, understand me, and the foreman couldn't keep 'em busy only half the time, verstehst du, he would quick look for another job."
Elkan's neighbour on the right had been growing steadily more crimson, and at last he hurriedly seized his hat and passed out into the aisle.
"That's a pretty friendly feller," Elkan said as he gazed after him. "Do you happen to know his name?"
"I ain't never heard his name," Milton replied; "but he is seemingly crazy about music. I seen him here every time I come."
"Well, I don't blame him none," Elkan commented; "because you take the Harlem Winter Garden, for instance, and though the music is rotten, understand me, they got the nerve to charge you yet for a lot of food which half the time you don't want at all; whereas here they didn't even ask us we should buy so much as a glass beer."
At this juncture the short, stout person returned and proceeded to entertain Elkan and Yetta by pointing out among the audience the figures of local and international millionaires.
"And all them fellers is crazy about music too?" Elkan asked.
"So crazy," his neighbour said, "that the little man over there, with the white beard, spends almost twenty thousand a year on it!"
"And yet," Milton said bitterly, "there's plenty fellers in the city which year in and year out composes chamber music and symphonic music which they couldn't themselves make ten dollars a week; and, when it comes right down to it, none of them millionaires would loosen up to such new beginners for even five hundred dollars to help them get a hearing."