e you could help me out, anyway. What
I'm looking for is a partner for my boy, and the way I feel about it is
like this: The boy used to be a little wild, y'understand, and so I am
looking for a partner for him what would keep him straight; and no
matter if the partner didn't have no money, Mr. Levy, I wouldn't take
it so particular. That boy is the only boy what I got, and certainly I
ain't a begger, neither, y'understand. You should ask anybody in the
cigar business, Mr. Levy, and they will tell you I am pretty well fixed
already."

"Sure, I know," Mr. Levy replied. "You got a pretty good rating. I
looked you up already. But, anyhow, Mr. Zwiebel, I ain't in the
business brokerage no more."

"I know you ain't," Zwiebel said, "but you could find just the partner
for my boy."

"I don't know of no partner for your boy, Mr. Zwiebel."

"Yes, you do," Zwiebel cried. "You know the very partner what I want
for that boy. Her name is Clara Levy."

"What!" Levy cried.

"Yes, sir," Zwiebel went on breathlessly. "That's the partner I mean.
That boy loves that girl of yours, Mr. Levy, and certainly he ought to
love her, because she done a whole lot for that boy, Mr. Levy, and I
got to say that she thinks a whole lot of him, too."

"But----" Mr. Levy commenced.

"But nothing, Mr. Levy," Zwiebel interrupted. "If the girl is satisfied
I wouldn't ask you to do a thing for the boy. Everything I will do for
him myself."

Mr. Levy rose and extended his hand.

"Mr. Zwiebel," he declared, "this is certainly very generous of you. I
tell you from the bottom of my heart I got four girls at home and two
of 'em ain't so young no more, so I couldn't say that I am all broke up
exactly. At the same time, Mr. Zwiebel, my Clara is a good girl, and
this much I got to say, I will give that girl a trousseau like a queen
should wear it."

Zwiebel shrugged.

"Well, sure," he said, "it ain't no harm that a girl should have a few
diamonds what she could wear it occasionally. At the same time, don't
go to no expense."

"And I will make for her a wedding, Mr. Zwiebel," Levy cried
enthusiastically, "which there never was before. A bottle of
tchampanyer wine to every guest."

"And now, Mr. Levy," Zwiebel said, "let us go downstairs and have a
bottle tchampanyer wine to ourselves."

That evening Milton and Clara sat together in the front parlour of the
Levy residence on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street. They had plighted
their troth more th