"What's worrying you, Lubliner?" he asked as they seated themselves in the café of the Prince Clarence. "You look like you was figuring out the interest on the money you owe."
"I'll tell you the truth, Mr. Kapfer," Elkan began, "I would like to ask you an advice about something."
"Go as far as you like," Kapfer replied. "It don't make no difference if a feller would be broke oder in jail, he could always give somebody advice."
"Well, it's like this," Elkan said, and forthwith he unfolded the circumstances attending his return from Bridgetown.
"Nu!" Kapfer commented when Elkan concluded his narrative. "What is that for something to worry about?"
"But the idee of the thing is wrong," Elkan protested. "In the first place, I got lots of time to get married, on account I am only twenty-one, Mr. Kapfer; and though a feller couldn't start in too early in business, Mr. Kapfer, getting married is something else again. To my mind a feller should be anyhow twenty-five before he jumps right in and gets married."
"With some people, yes, and others, no," Kapfer rejoined.
"And in the second place," Elkan went on, "I don't like this here Shadchen business. We are living in America, not Russland; and in America if a feller gets married he don't need no help from a Shadchen, Mr. Kapfer."
"No," Kapfer said, "he don't need no help, Lubliner; but, just the same, if some one would come to me any time these five years and says to me, here is something a nice girl, understand me, with five thousand dollars, y'understand, I would have been married schon long since already." He cleared his throat judicially and sat back in his chair until it rested against the wall. "The fact is, Lubliner," he said, "you are acting like a fool. What harm would it do supposing you would go up there to-night with this here Rashkind?"