yelled, "if you want to, but you couldn't put my wife out, because she ain't been served with the summons and complaint in the first place, and she ain't here in the second place."

Goldblatt turned pale and started for the rostrum, while the auctioneer motioned the attendant to hold off for a minute.

"Is he a married man?" the auctioneer asked Levy.

"He's a faker," Levy replied. "Go ahead with the sale."

"Am I a faker?" Philip yelled, holding up his left hand. "Well, look at that there ring."

He pulled it off with an effort and handed it to the auctioneer.

"Look inside," he said. And, sure enough, the inner side bore the inscription: "B. G. to P. M., 10-20-'09." Goldblatt looked at it, too; but B. G. meant nothing to him and he handed it back to the auctioneer.

"That's only a scheme what he's trying to work it," he said. "Give him back the ring and go ahead with the sale."

"One moment," said Miles M. Scully. "I'm the referee here, and I ain't going to take no such chance as that. I'm going to adjoin this here sale one week and investigate what this here guy says in the meantime."

Forthwith, the auctioneer announced a week's adjournment of the four sales, and Philip resumed his wedding ring with a parting diabolical grin at Goldblatt, and left the auction-room. He went to the nearest telephone pay station and rang up the Goldblatt residence, but for over half an hour he received only Central's assurance that as soon as there was an answer she would call him.

"But, Central," he protested, "there's got to be somebody there. They can't all be out."

And Philip was right. There were two people sitting in the front parlour of the Goldblatt residence, and another and more interested person stooped in the back parlour, with her ear to the crack of the sliding doors which divided the two rooms. The telephone bell trilled impatiently at brief intervals, but all three were oblivious to its appeal; for the two persons in the front parlour were engaged in conversation of an earnest character, and the person in the rear room would not have missed a word of it for all the telephones in the world.

"Yes, Fannie," said one of the two persons, "I come back to you, anyhow, and I come back for good."

He placed his arms around her ample waist.

"I assure you, Fannie," he concluded, "them dollar-a-day American-plan hotels in the northern-tier counties is nothing but poison to a feller. I am pretty near starved."

"Why didn't you say so at first?" Fannie replied, rising from the couch where she had been sitting with Feigenbaum. "I got some fine gefüllte Fische in the ice-box."

Whereupon Birdie answered the 'phone.

"Hallo!" came a voice from the other end of the wire. "Where was you all the time? I got some good news for you."

"I've got some good news for you, too," Birdie replied. "Fannie and Mr. Feigenbaum are engaged."

VII

Elkan Goldblatt usually arrived home at seven o'clock to find his dinner smoking on the table. His daughter Fannie always attended to the carving, but on the night of the foreclosure sale it was Birdie who presided at the head of the board.

"Where's Fannie?" he asked.

"She went out to dinner," Birdie explained.

Elkan nodded and lapsed into gloomy silence.

"What's the matter now?" Birdie inquired.

"That lowlife Margolius," he said, "what do you think from that loafer? He goes to work and gets married."

Birdie gasped and turned white, all of which her father mistook for symptoms of astonishment.

"Ain't that a loafer for you?" he continued. "All the time he hangs around here, and then he goes to work and gets married."

"Who did he marry?" Birdie asked innocently.

"A question!" Goldblatt exclaimed. "Who can tell it who a lowlife like him would marry?"

Birdie tossed her head.

"He ain't no lowlife just because he gets married," she retorted. "What's more, any girl would be glad to get a good-looking, decent young feller like Philip Margolius."

Goldblatt laid down his knife and fork.

"You are crazy in the head," he said. "Why should you stick up for a young feller what comes around here and upsets my whole house? You I don't care about, because you could always get a husband; but Fannie—that's different again. It ain't enough for that loafer that he disappointed her himself, but he also got to bring around here that one-eyed feller—another such lowlife as Margolius—and he also disappoints Fannie. That feller Margolius is a dawg, Birdie, believe me."

Birdie rose from her seat and threw her napkin on to the floor.

"I won't sit here and listen to such talk," she cried and ran out of the room. For a moment Goldblatt essayed to finish his dinner, and then he, too, rose and followed Birdie. He found her weeping on the parlour lounge.

"Birdie!" he cried. "Birdiechen, what are you taking on so for?"

"I won't have you say such things about Ph-Ph—Feigenbaum," she sobbed.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because Mr. Feigenbaum came here this afternoon and proposed to Fannie," she explained to her father, "and they're downtown now getting the ring from a friend of his what keeps a jewellery store on Grand Street."

Goldblatt sat down heavily on the lounge and wiped his forehead. For ten minutes he sat motionless in the shrouded gloom of that front parlour before he could realize his daughter's good fortune.

"After all," he said finally, "when a feller's got six stores you could easy excuse him one eye."

"You ought to be ashamed to talk that way," Birdie cried. "Mr. Feigenbaum is a decent business man, and if it wouldn't be for Philip—Philip Margolius—Fannie would of lived and died an old maid."

At this juncture came a ring at the bell and the sound of voices in the hall. It was Fannie and her fiancé, who had returned from Grand Street, and the next moment Goldblatt clasped his affianced daughter in his arms and bestowed on her great kisses that fairly resounded down the block. Next he grabbed Feigenbaum's hand and shook it up and down.

"The happiest day what I ever lived," he cried, slapping his new son-in-law on the back. For almost a quarter of an hour Fannie and Birdie mingled their tears with their father's embraces, and in the midst of the excitement the bell rang again. When the maid opened the street door some one inquired for Mr. Goldblatt in a barytone voice whose familiar timbre chilled into silence the joyful uproar.

"Margolius!" Goldblatt hissed. He started for the hall with blood in his eye, when Feigenbaum seized him by the arm.

"Mr. Goldblatt," he said, "for my sake don't make no fuss with Margolius. He's a friend of mine, and if it wouldn't be for him Fannie and me would never of met already."

As Philip entered the darkened front parlour there was a silence so profound that he believed the room to be empty.

"Excuse me," he cried when he recognized the assembled company. "I thought Mr. Goldblatt was alone."

He turned to his father-in-law.

"Mr. Goldblatt, could I speak to you for a minute by yourself?" he asked.

Goldblatt coughed impressively.

"Margolius," he announced, "if you got anything to say to me, say it right here. I ain't got no private business