going on there."

"Did Scharley got any objections?" Polatkin asked.

"Fortunately the feller had gone away from the table," Klinger replied,
"so he didn't hear it at all."

"Well," Polatkin declared, taking up his knife and fork as a signal that
the matter was closed, "ask him and see if he wouldn't a whole lot
sooner eat some good brown stewed fish sweet and sour as a Chinese
Lantern Dinner--whatever for a bunch of poison that might be,
Klinger--and don't you forget it."

Nevertheless when Polatkin returned to his place of business he
proceeded at once to Elkan's office.

"Say, lookyhere Elkan," he demanded, "what is all this I hear about you
and Yetta taking an old _Bube_ into the Hanging Gardens already, and
making from her laughing stocks out of the whole place."

Elkan looked up calmly.

"It's a free country, Mr. Polatkin," he said, "and so long as I pay my
board _mit_ U. S. money, already I would take in there any of my friends
I would please."

"Sure, I know," Polatkin expostulated, "but I seen Klinger around at
Hammersmith's and he says----"

"Klinger!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, you could say to Klinger for me, Mr.
Polatkin, that if he don't like the way I am acting around there,
understand me, he should just got the nerve to tell it me to my face
yet."

Polatkin flapped the air with his right hand.

"Never mind Klinger, Elkan," he said. "You got to consider you shouldn't
make a fool of yourself before Scharley and all them people. How do you
expect you should get such a merchant as Scharley he should accept from
you entertainment like a Chinese Lantern Dinner, if you are acting that
way?"

"Chinese Lantern Dinner be damned!" Elkan retorted. "When we got the
right goods at the right price, Mr. Polatkin, why should we got to give
a merchant dinners yet to convince him of it?"

"Dinners is nothing, Elkan," Polatkin interrupted with a wave of his
hand. "You got to give him dyspepsha even, the way business is
nowadays."

"_Aber_ I was talking to the room clerk last night," Elkan went on, "and
he tells me so sure as you are standing there, Mr. Polatkin, a Chinese
Lantern Dinner would stand us in twenty dollars a head."

"Twenty dollars a head!" Polatkin exclaimed and indulged himself in a
low whistle.

"So even if I _would_ be staying at the Salisbury, understand me," Elkan
said, "I ain't going to throw away our money out of the window exactly."

"_Aber_ how are you going to get the feller down