returned to the factory where, at hourly
intervals during the following week, Seiden accosted him and issued
bulletins of the arrival of wedding presents and the acceptance of
invitations to the ceremony.

"What do you think for a couple of small potatoes like Kugel &
Mishkin?" he said. "If I bought a cent from them people during the last
five years I must of bought three hundred dollars' worth of buttons;
and they got the nerve to send a half a dozen coffee spoons, which they
are so light, y'understand, you could pretty near see through 'em."

Sternsilver received this news with a manner suggesting a cramped
swimmer coming up for the second time.

"Never mind, Sternsilver," Seiden continued reassuringly, "we got a
whole lot of people to hear from yet. I bet yer the Binder & Baum
Manufacturing Company, the least you get from 'em is a piece of cut
glass which it costs, at wholesale yet, ten dollars."

Sternsilver's distress proceeded from another cause, however; for that
very morning he had made a desperate resolve, which was no less than to
leave the Borough of Manhattan and to begin life anew in Philadelphia.
From the immediate execution of the plan he was deterred only by one
circumstance--lack of funds; and this he proposed to overcome by
borrowing from Fatkin. Indeed, when he pondered the situation, he
became convinced that Fatkin, as the cause of his dilemma, ought to be
the means of his extrication. He therefore broached the matter of a
loan more in the manner of a lender than a borrower.

"Say, lookyhere, Fatkin," he said on the day before the wedding, "I got
to have some money right away."

Fatkin shrugged philosophically.

"A whole lot of fellers feels the same way," he said.

"Only till Saturday week," Sternsilver continued, "and I want you
should give me twenty-five dollars."

"Me?" Fatkin exclaimed.

"Sure, you," Sternsilver said; "and I want it now."

"Don't make me no jokes, Sternsilver," Fatkin replied.

"I ain't joking, Fatkin; far from it," Sternsilver declared. "To-morrow
it is all fixed for the wedding and I got to have twenty-five dollars."

"What d'ye mean, to-morrow is fixed for the wedding?" Fatkin retorted
indignantly. "Do you want to get married on my money yet?"

"I don't want the money to get married on," Sternsilver protested. "I
want it for something else again."

"My worries! What you want it for?" Fatkin concluded, with a note of
finality in his tone. "I would _oser_ giv