"Why, you did!" Kapfer said.
"I never said nothing of the kind," Elkan declared, "because I ain't engaged to Miss Maslik at all; in fact, I never even seen her."
Kapfer gazed earnestly at Elkan and then sat down suddenly.
"Say, lookyhere, Lubliner," he said. "Are you crazy or am I? Last night you says you are going up with a Shadchen to see Birdie Maslik, and now you tell me you are engaged, but not to Miss Maslik."
"That's right," Elkan replied.
"Then who in thunder are you engaged to?"
"That's just the point," Elkan said, as he passed his hand through his hair. "I ain't slept a wink all night on account of it; in fact, this morning I wondered should I go round there and ask—and then I thought to myself I would get from you an advice first."
"Get from me an advice!" Kapfer exclaimed. "You mean you are engaged to a girl and you don't know her name, and so you come down here to ask me an advice as to how you should find out her name?"
Elkan nodded sadly and leaned his elbow on the table.
"It's like this," he said; and for more than half an hour he regaled Kapfer with a story that, stripped of descriptive and irrelevant material concerning Elkan's own feelings in the matter, ought to have taken only five minutes in the telling.