"What do you think, Mr. Lubliner?" Max asked; and Elkan frowned his annoyance at the interruption, for he had just begun to catch a few words of the conversation in the rear room.
"Sure—sure!" he said absently. "I leave it to you and Mrs. Lubliner."
Yetta's face had fallen as she viewed the apparently decayed and rickety furniture.
"Ain't they terrible shabby-looking!" she murmured, and Ringentaub shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
"You would look shabby, too, lady," he said, "if you would be two hundred and fifty years old; aber if you want to see what they look like after they are restored, y'understand, I got back there one of the rest of the set which I already sold to Mr. Paul; and I am fixing it up for him."
As he finished speaking he walked to the rear and dragged forward a reseated and polished duplicate of the two chairs.
"I dassent restore 'em before I sell 'em," Ringentaub explained; "otherwise no one believes they are gen-wine."
"And how much do you say you want for them chairs, Ringentaub?" Max asked.
"I didn't say I wanted nothing," Ringentaub replied. "The fact is, I don't know whether I want to keep them chairs oder not. You see, Mr. Merech, Jacobean chairs is pretty near so rare nowadays that it would pay me to wait a while. In a couple of years them chairs double in value already."
"Sure, I know," Max said. "You could say the same thing about your whole stock, Ringentaub; and so, if I would be you, Ringentaub, I would take a little vacation of a couple years or so. Go round the world mit Mrs. Ringentaub, understand me, and by the time you come back you are worth twicet as much as you got to-day; but just to help pay your rent while you are away, Mr. Ringentaub, I'll make you an offer of thirty-five dollars for the chairs."