Object: matrimony. Glass Montague

a nerve?" Miss Goldblatt exclaimed.

      "Why do I got a nerve?" Philip asked. "Miss Goldblatt – Birdie, what's the matter with me, anyway? I'm young yet – I ain't only thirty-two – and I got a good name in the cloak and suit business as a salesman. Ask anybody. I can make it my five thousand a year easy. And supposing I am a foreigner? There's lots of up-to-date American young fellers what couldn't keep you in hairpins, Birdie."

      He paused and looked pleadingly at Birdie, who tossed her head in reply.

      "Them houses up in the Bronix," he said, "that's a misfortune what could happen anybody. If I got to let 'em go I'll do it. But pshaw! I could make it up what I lost in them houses with my commissions for one good season already."

      "Well, my sister Fannie – " Birdie commenced.

      "Never mind your sister Fannie," Philip said. "I will look out for her. If you and me can fix it up, Birdie, I give you my word and honour as a gentleman I will fix it up for Fannie a respectable feller with a good business."

      He paused for an expression of opinion from Birdie, but none was forthcoming.

      "What are you doing to-night?" he asked.

      "Fannie and me was – " she began.

      "Not Fannie —you," he broke in. "Because I was going to suggest if you ain't doing nothing might we would go to theaytre?"

      "Well, sure," Birdie continued. "Fannie and me could go and we wouldn't say nothing to the old man about it."

      "Looky here," Philip pleaded, "must Fannie go?"

      "Sure she must go," Birdie answered. "Otherwise, if she don't go I won't go."

      Philip pondered for a moment.

      "Well – " he commenced.

      "And why wouldn't it be a good scheme," Birdie went on, "if you was to ring in this other young feller?"

      "What young feller?" Philip innocently asked her.

      "What young feller!" Birdie exclaimed. "Why, ain't you just told me – "

      "Oh, that's right!" Philip cried. "That's a good idee. I'll see if I can fix it."

      He stopped short and looked at his watch. "I'll meet you both in front of the Casino at eight o'clock," he declared.

      It was five o'clock and he only had a trifle over three hours to discover a man – young if possible, but, in any event, prosperous, who would be willing to conduct to the theatre a lady of uncertain age with a dark moustache – object: matrimony.

      "You must excuse me," he said fervently as he shook Birdie's hand in farewell. "I got a lot of work to do this afternoon."

      III

      On his way to the office of Schindler & Baum, his employers, he was a prey to misgivings of the gloomiest kind.

      "I got such a chance of getting a feller for that Fannie like I would never try at all," he murmured to himself; but, as he turned the corner of Nineteenth Street, Fortune, which occasionally favours the brave, brought him into violent contact with a short, stout person proceeding in the opposite direction.