"Sure, that's right," Elkan said. "Only, if I am paying him seven dollars a week board, he must got to give Mrs. Feinermann a dollar and a half extra housekeeping money. Is that agreeable, Feinermann?"
"Then that's all we want from you, Feinermann," Polatkin added, "except I want to tell you this much: I am asking Elkan he should come uptown and live with me; and he says no--he would prefer to stick where he is."
"I ain't got no objections," he said as he withdrew.
"And now, Elkan," Polatkin cried, "we got to fix it up with the other feller."
Hardly had he spoken when there stood framed in the open doorway the disheveled figure of Flaxberg.
"_Nu_, Flaxberg," Polatkin said. "What d'ye want from us now?"
"I am coming to tell you this, Mr. Polatkin," Flaxberg said thickly through his cut and swollen lips: "I am coming to tell you that I'm sick and so you must give me permission to go home."
"Nobody wants you to stay here, Flaxberg," Polatkin answered.
"Sure, I know," Flaxberg rejoined; "but if I would go home without your consent you would claim I made a breach of my contract."
"Don't let that worry you in the least, Flaxberg," Polatkin retorted, "because, so far as that goes, we fire you right here and now, on account you didn't make no attempt to sell Appenweier & Murray, when a boy like Elkan, which up to now he wasn't even a salesman at all, could sell 'em one thousand dollars goods."
Flaxberg's puffed features contorted themselves in an expression of astonishment.
"Lubliner sells Appenweier & Murray a bill of goods!" he exclaimed.
By way of answer Polatkin held out the order slip for Flaxberg's inspection.
"That's all right," Flaxberg declared. "I would make it hot for you anyhow! You put this young feller up to it that he pretty near kills me."
"_Yow!_ We put him up to it!" Polatkin retorted. "You put him up to it yourself, Flaxberg. You are lucky he didn't break your neck for you; because, if you think you could sue anybody in the courts yet, we got for witness Feinermann, Markulies and ourselves that you called him a liar and a thief."
"_Nu_, Polatkin," Scheikowitz said, "give him say a hundred dollars and call it square."
"You wouldn't give me five hundred dollars," Flaxberg shouted as he started for the door, "because I would sue you in the courts for five thousand dollars yet."