There was something about Mr. Elkan Goldblatt's face that would make the most hardy real-estater pause before entering into a business deal with him. He had an eye like a poll-parrot with its concomitant beak, and his closely cropped beard and moustache accentuated rather than mollified his harsh appearance.
"Such fellers I wouldn't have no more mercy on than a dawg," he said to his attorney, Eleazer Levy. "Oncet already I practically kicked him out from my house, and then he's got the nerve to come back, and two weeks ago he brings yet a feller with him and makes bluffs that the feller wants to marry my daughter Fannie."
"He was just trying to get you to extend those second mortgages, I suppose," Levy said.
"Sure he was, because this here feller—a homely looking feller with one eye, mind you—says he got to go back to Pennsylvania where his stores is, and we ain't seen nor heard a word from him since," Goldblatt concluded. "And him eating two meals a day by us for ten days yet!"
Eleazer Levy clucked with his tongue in sympathy.
"But, anyhow, now I want we should go right straight ahead and foreclose on Margolius," Goldblatt continued. "Don't lose no time, Levy, and get out the papers to-day. How long would it be before we can sell the property?"
"Six weeks," said Levy, "if I serve the summons to-morrow. I put in a search some days ago, and the feller ain't got a judgment against him."
"So much the better," Goldblatt commented. "The property won't bring the amount of the first mortgage and I suppose I got to buy it in. Then I will get deficiency judgments against that feller, and I'll make him sorry he ever tried any monkey business with me and my daughters. Why, that feller actually turned my own children against me, Levy."
"Is that so?" Levy murmured.
"My Birdie abused me, I assure you, like I was a pickpocket when I says I would foreclose on him," Goldblatt replied. "And even my Fannie, although she is all broke up about that one-eyed feller, she says I should give the young feller a show. What d'ye think of that, hey?"