"Hold on!" Seiden shouted, seizing Fatkin by the arm. "Don't be a fool, Fatkin. What are you throwing away a hundred dollars cash for?" 

 "Me throw away a hundred dollars cash?" Fatkin blurted out. 

 "Sure," Seiden answered. "If you would marry Miss Bessie Saphir you would not only get by me a job as foreman, but also I am willing to give you a hundred dollars cash." 

 Fatkin returned to the office and again sat down opposite his employer. 

 "Say, lookyhere, Mr. Seiden," he said, "I want to tell you something. You are springing on me suddenly a proposition which it is something you could really say is remarkable. Ain't it?" 

 Seiden nodded. 

 "Miss Bessie Saphir, which she is anyhow—her own best friend would got to admit it—homely like anything, Mr. Seiden," Fatkin continued, "is going to marry Sternsilver; and just because Sternsilver runs away, I should jump in and marry her like I would be nobody!" 

 Seiden nodded again. 

 "Another thing, Mr. Seiden," Hillel went on. "What is a hundred dollars? My Grossvater, olav hasholam—which he was a very learned man, for years a rabbi in Telshi——" 

 "Sure, I know, Fatkin," Seiden interrupted. "You told me that before." 

 "—for years a rabbi in Telshi," Hillel repeated, not deigning to notice the interruption save by a malevolent glare, "used to say: 'Soon married, quick divorced.' Why should I bring tzuris on myself by doing this thing, Mr. Seiden?" 

 Seiden treated the question as rhetorical and made no reply. 

 "Also I got in bank nearly three hundred dollars, Mr. Seiden," he concluded; "and even if I was a feller which wouldn't be from such fine family in the old country, understand me, three hundred dollars is three hundred dollars, Mr. Seiden, and that's all there is to it." 

 Seiden pondered deeply for a minute. 

 "All right, Fatkin," he said; "make it a hundred and fifty dollars und fertig." 

 "Three hundred dollars oder nothing!" Fatkin replied firmly; and after half an hour of more or less acrid discussion Fatkin agreed to accept Miss Bessie Saphir plus three hundred dollars and a 

 Prev. P 53/208 next