"YES, Mr. Lubliner," said Max Merech as he sat in the front parlour of Elkan's flat one April Sunday; "if you are going to work to buy furniture, understand me, it's just so easy to select good-looking chairs as bad-looking chairs."
"Aber sometimes it's a whole lot harder to sit on 'em comfortably," Elkan retorted sourly. On the eve of moving to a larger apartment he and Yetta had invited Max to suggest a plan for furnishing and decorating their new dwelling; and it seemed to Elkan that Max had taken undue advantage of the privilege thus accorded him. Indeed, Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's æsthetic designer held such pronounced views on interior decoration, and had expressed them so freely to Elkan and Yetta, that after the first half-hour of his visit the esteem which they had always felt toward their plush furniture and Wilton rugs had changed—first to indifference and then, in the case of Yetta, at least, to loathing.
"I always told you that the couch over there was hideous, Elkan," Yetta said.
"Hideous it ain't," Max interrupted; "aber it ain't so beautiful."
"Well, stick the couch in the bedroom, then," Elkan said. "It makes no difference to me."
"Sure, I know," Yetta exclaimed: "but what would we put in its place?"
Elkan shrugged his shoulders.
"What d'ye ask me for?" Elkan cried. "Like as not I'd say another couch."
"There is couches and couches," Max said with an apologetic smile, "but if you would ask my advice I would say why not a couple nice chairs there—something in monhogany, like Shippendaler oder Sheratin."
Suddenly he slapped his thigh in an access of inspiration.