"Why not?" he asked.
"Because Mr. Feigenbaum came here this afternoon and proposed to Fannie," she explained to her father, "and they're downtown now getting the ring from a friend of his what keeps a jewellery store on Grand Street."
Goldblatt sat down heavily on the lounge and wiped his forehead. For ten minutes he sat motionless in the shrouded gloom of that front parlour before he could realize his daughter's good fortune.
"After all," he said finally, "when a feller's got six stores you could easy excuse him one eye."
"You ought to be ashamed to talk that way," Birdie cried. "Mr. Feigenbaum is a decent business man, and if it wouldn't be for Philip—Philip Margolius—Fannie would of lived and died an old maid."
At this juncture came a ring at the bell and the sound of voices in the hall. It was Fannie and her fiancé, who had returned from Grand Street, and the next moment Goldblatt clasped his affianced daughter in his arms and bestowed on her great kisses that fairly resounded down the block. Next he grabbed Feigenbaum's hand and shook it up and down.
"The happiest day what I ever lived," he cried, slapping his new son-in-law on the back. For almost a quarter of an hour Fannie and Birdie mingled their tears with their father's embraces, and in the midst of the excitement the bell rang again. When the maid opened the street door some one inquired for Mr. Goldblatt in a barytone voice whose familiar timbre chilled into silence the joyful uproar.
"Margolius!" Goldblatt hissed. He started for the hall with blood in his eye, when Feigenbaum seized him by the arm.
"Mr. Goldblatt," he said, "for my sake don't make no fuss with Margolius. He's a friend of mine, and if it wouldn't be for him Fannie and me would never of met already."
As Philip entered the darkened front parlour there was a silence so profound that he believed the room to be empty.