"What have I got to do with your partner?" he said as he started for the elevator. "If I meet him in the place, I am selling buttons and you don't want to buy none. Ain't it?"
Polatkin nodded and turned to the examination of a pile of monthly statements by way of dismissing the marriage broker. Moreover, he felt impelled to devise some excuse for sending for Elkan, so that he might have it pat upon the return from lunch of his partner, Philip Scheikowitz, who at that precise moment was seated in the rear of Wasserbauer's café, by the side of Charles Fischko.
"Yes, Mr. Scheikowitz," Fischko said, "if you would really got the feller's interest in heart, understand me, you wouldn't wait till Saturday at all. Write him to-day yet, because this proposition is something which you could really call remarkable, on account most girls which they got five thousand dollars dowries, Mr. Scheikowitz, ain't got five-thousand-dollar faces; aber this here Miss Maslik is something which when you are paying seventy-five cents a seat on theaytre, understand me, you don't see such an elegant-looking Gesicht. She's a regular doll, Mr. Scheikowitz!"
"Sure, I know," Scheikowitz agreed; "that's the way it is with them dolls, Fischko—takes a fortune already to dress 'em."
Fischko flapped the air indignantly with both hands.
"That's where you are making a big mistake," he declared. "The Masliks got living in the house with 'em a girl which for years already she makes all Miss Maslik's dresses and Mrs. Maslik's also. B. Maslik told me so himself, Mr. Scheikowitz. He says to me: 'Fischko,' he says, 'my Birdie is a girl which she ain't accustomed she should got a lot of money spent on her,' he says; 'the five thousand dollars is practically net,' he says, 'on account his expenses would be small.'"
"Is she a good cook?" Scheikowitz asked.
"A good cook!" Fischko cried. "Listen here to me, Mr. Scheikowitz. You know that a Shadchen eats sometimes in pretty swell houses. Ain't it?"
Scheikowitz nodded.
"Well, I am telling you, Mr. Scheikowitz, so sure as I am sitting here, that I got in B. Maslik's last Tuesday a week ago already a piece of plain everyday gefüllte Hechte, Mr. Scheikowitz, which honestly, if you would go to Delmonico's oder the Waldorfer, understand me, you could pay as high as fifty cents for it, Mr. Scheikowitz, and it wouldn't be—I am not saying better—but so good even as that there gefüllte Hechte which I got it by B. Maslik."