"What d'ye mean—getting fired?" Elkan replied. "I ain't fired. I got an afternoon off."
Mrs. Feinermann heaved a sigh of relief. As the recipient of Elkan's five dollars a week board-money, payable strictly in advance, she naturally evinced a hearty interest in his financial affairs. Moreover, she was distantly related to Elkan's father; and owing to this kinship her husband, Marx Feinermann, foreman for Kupferberg Brothers, was of the impression that she charged Elkan only three dollars and fifty cents a week. The underestimate more than paid Mrs. Feinermann's millinery bill, and she was consequently under the necessity of buying Elkan's silence with small items of laundry work and an occasional egg for breakfast. This arrangement suited Elkan very well indeed; and though he had eaten his lunch only an hour previously he thought it the part of prudence to insist that she prepare a meal for him, by way of maintaining his privileges as Mrs. Feinermann's fellow conspirator.
"But I am just now getting dressed to go uptown," she protested.
"Where to?" he demanded.
"I got a little shopping to do," she said; and Elkan snapped his fingers in the conception of a brilliant idea.
"Good!" he exclaimed. "I would go with you. In three minutes I would wash myself and change my clothes—and I'll be right with you."
"But I got to stop in and see Marx first," she insisted. "I want to tell him something."
"I wanted to tell him something lots of times already," Elkan said significantly; and Mrs. Feinermann sat down in the nearest chair while Elkan disappeared into the adjoining room and performed a hasty toilet.
"Schon gut," he said as he emerged from his room five minutes later; "we would go right up to Appenweier & Murray's."
"But I ain't said I am going up to Appenweier & Murray's," Mrs. Feinermann cried. "Such a high-price place I couldn't afford to deal with at all."