"Nu, Lubliner," cried a rasping voice from the doorway, "we got our appointment for nothing—Miss Maslik is sick."
"That's too bad," Elkan said perfunctorily.
"Only a little something she eats gives her a headache," Rashkind went on. "We could come round the day after to-morrow night."
"That's too bad also," Elkan commented, "on account the day after to-morrow night I got a date with a customer."
"Well, anyhow, B. Maslik would be in in a minute and——"
Elkan rose to his feet so abruptly that he nearly sent his chair through a cabinet behind him.
"If I want to be here Friday night," he said, "I must see my customer to-night yet; so, young lady, if you would be so kind to tell Mr. Maslik I couldn't wait, but would be here Friday night with this here—now—gentleman. Come on, Rashkind."
He started for the hall door almost on a run, with Rashkind gesticulating excitedly behind him; but, before the Shadchen could even grasp his coattails he had let himself hurriedly out and was taking the stairs three at a jump.
"Hey!" Rashkind shouted as he plunged down the steps after Elkan. "What's the matter with you? Don't you want to meet Mr. Maslik?"
Elkan only hurried the faster, however, for in the few minutes he had been alone in the room with the little brown-eyed maid he had made the discovery that marriage with the aid of a Shadchen was impossible for him. Simultaneously he conceived the notion that marriage without the aid of a Shadchen might after all be well worth trying; and, as this idea loomed in his mind, his pace slackened until the Shadchen overtook him at the corner of One Hundred and Sixteenth Street.