Ain't I right?" 

 Again Sternsilver nodded and 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. 

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