to it!"

* * * * *

At half-past one that afternoon, while Max Kapfer was enjoying a good
cigar in the lobby of the Prince Clarence, he received an unexpected
visitor in the person of Julius Flixman.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Flixman?" he cried, dragging forth a chair.

Flixman extended a thin, bony hand in greeting and sat down wearily.

"I don't do so good, Kapfer," he said. "I guess New York don't agree
with me." He distorted his face in what he intended to be an amiable
smile. "But I guess it agrees with you all right," he continued. "I
suppose I must got to congradulate you on account you are going to be
engaged to Miss Birdie Maslik."

"Why, who told you about it?" Kapfer asked.

"I met this morning a real-estater by the name Rashkind, which he is
acquainted with the Maslik family," Flixman replied, "and he says it
happened yesterday. Also they told me up at the hotel you was calling
there this morning to see me."

"That's right," Kapfer said; "and you was out."

"I was down to see a feller on Center Street," Flixman went on, "and so
I thought, so long as you wanted to fix up about the note, I might just
as well come down here."

"I'm much obliged to you," Kapfer interrupted.

"Not at all," Flixman continued. "When a feller wants to pay you money
and comes to see you once to do it and you ain't in, understand me, then
it's up to you to go to him; so here I am."

"But the fact is," Kapfer said, "I didn't want to see you about paying
the money exactly. I wanted to see you about not paying it."

"About not paying it?" Flixman cried.

"Sure!" Kapfer replied. "I wanted to see if you wouldn't give me a
year's extension for that last thousand on account I am going to get
married; and with what Miss Maslik would bring me, y'understand, and
your thousand dollars which I got here, I would just have enough to fix
up my second floor and build a twenty-five-foot extension on the rear.
You see, I figure it this way." He searched his pocket for a piece of
paper and produced a fountain pen. "I figure that the fixtures cost me
twenty-two hundred," he began, "and----"

At this juncture Flixman flipped his fingers derisively.

"Pipe dreams you got it!" he said. "That store as it stands was good
enough for me, and it should ought to be good enough for you.
Furthermore, Kapfer, if you want to invest Maslik's money and your own
money, _schon gut_; but me, I could always put a thousand dollars i