; and he was
right too, Elkan. Polatkin and me made Redman change it over."

Elkan shrugged again as he put on his hat and coat preparatory to going
home.

"A lot our class of trade worries about such things!" he exclaimed. "So
far as they are concerned the soutache could be crimson and the yoke
green, and if the price was right they'd buy it anyhow."

"Don't you fool yourself, Elkan," Scheikowitz said while Elkan rang for
the elevator. "The price is never right if the workmanship ain't good."

* * * * *

That Elkan Lubliner's progress in business had not kept pace with his
social achievements was a source of much disappointment to both Mrs.
Lubliner and himself; for though the firm of Polatkin, Scheikowitz &
Company was still rated seventy-five thousand dollars to one hundred
thousand dollars--credit good--Elkan and Mrs. Lubliner moved in the
social orbit of no less a personage than of Max Koblin, the Raincoat
King, whose credit soared triumphantly among the A's and B's of
old-established commission houses.

Indeed it was a party at Max Koblin's house that evening which caused
Elkan to leave his place of business at half-past five; and when Mrs.
Lubliner and he sallied forth from the gilt and porphyry hallway of
their apartment dwelling they were fittingly arrayed to meet Max's
guests, none of whom catered to the popular-price trade of Polatkin,
Scheikowitz & Company.

"Why didn't you told him we are getting next week paid off for five
thousand dollars a second mortgage?" Yetta said, continuing a
conversation begun at dinner that evening.

"I did told him," Elkan insisted; "but what is the use talking to a
couple of old-timers like them?"

Yetta sniffed contemptuously with the impatience of youth at the foibles
of senility, as exemplified by the doddering Philip Scheikowitz, aged
forty-five, and the valetudinarian Marcus Polatkin, whose hair, albeit
unfrosted, had been blighted and in part swept away by the vicissitudes
of forty-two winters.

"You can't learn an old dawg young tricks," Elkan declared, "and we
might just as well make up our minds to it, Yetta, we would never
compete with such highgrade concerns like B. Gans _oder_ Schwefel &
Zucker."

They walked over two blocks in silence and then Elkan broke out anew.

"I tell you," he said, "I am sick and tired of it. B. Gans talks all the
time about selling this big _Macher_ and that big _Macher_, and him and
Mr. Schwefel gets