"The reason why I am getting Fischko to bring her down," Kapfer explained, "is because, in the first place, it looks pretty schlecht that a feller should meet a girl only once and, without the help of a Shadchen, gets right away engaged to her; and so, with Fischko the Shadchen there, it looks better for you both. Furthermore, in the second place, a girl which is doing housework, Elkan, must got to have an excuse, understand me; otherwise she couldn't get away from her work at all."
"But," Elkan said, "how do you expect that Yetta would go with a Shadchen to see this here Ury Shemansky when she is already engaged to me?"
"Schafskopf!" Kapfer exclaimed. "Telephone her the first thing to-morrow morning that you are this here Ury Shemansky and she would come quick enough!"
"That part's all right," Elkan agreed; "but I don't see yet how you are going to get Polatkin and Scheikowitz there."
Kapfer nodded his head with spurious confidence; for of this, perhaps the most important part of his plan, he felt extremely doubtful.
"Leave that to me," he said sagely, and the next moment they entered the Harlem Winter Garden to find Charles Fischko gazing sadly at a solution of bicarbonate of soda and ammonia, a tumblerful of which stood in front of him on the table.
"Mr. Fischko," Kapfer said, "this is my friend Ury Shemansky, the gentleman I was speaking to you about."
"No relation to Shemansky who used to was in the customer pedler business on Ridge Street?" Fischko asked.
"Not as I've heard," Elkan said.
"Because there's a feller, understand me, which he went to work and married a poor girl; and ever since he's got nothing but Mazel. The week afterward he found in the street a diamond ring worth two hundred dollars, and the next month a greenhorn comes over with ten thousand rubles and wants to go as partners together with him in business. In a year's time Shemansky dissolves the partnership and starts in the remnant business with five thousand dollars net capital. He ain't been established two weeks, understand me, when a liquor saloon next door burns out and he gets a thousand dollars smoke damage; and one thing follows another, y'understand, till to-day he's worth easy his fifty thousand dollars. That's what it is to marry a poor girl, Mr. Shemansky." He took a pull at the tumbler of bicarbonate and made an involuntary grimace. "Furthermore, I am knowing this here Miss Silbermacher ever since she is born, pretty nearly!" Fischko cried.