“Abe, you tell the lady what I was saying. This is Mr. Abel Fromkin, maker of the Fromkin Form-Fit Skirt. Abe, this is the wonderful Mrs. McChesney.”
“Sorry I can't wait to hear what you've said of me. This is my floor.” Mrs. McChesney was already leaving the elevator.
“Here! Wait a minute!” Fat Ed Meyers was out and standing beside her, his movements unbelievably nimble. “Will you have dinner with us, Mrs. McChesney?”
Meyers turned to the waiting elevator. “Fromkin, you go on up with the boy; I'll talk to the lady a minute.”
A little displeased frown appeared on Emma McChesney's face.
“You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Meyers, I--”
“Heigh-ho for that haughty stuff, Mrs. McChesney,” grinned Ed Meyers. “Don't turn up your nose at that little Kike friend of mine till you've heard what I have to say. Now just let me talk a minute. Fromkin's heard all about you. He's got a proposition to make. And it isn't one to sniff at.”
He lowered his voice mysteriously in the silence of the dim hotel corridor.
“Fromkin started in a little one-room hole-in-the-wall over on the East Side. Lived on a herring and a hunk of rye bread. Wife used to help him sew. That was seven years ago. In three years, or less, she'll have the regulation uniform--full length seal coat, bunch of paradise, five-drop diamond La Valliere set in platinum, electric brougham. Abe has got a business head, take it from me. But he's wise enough to know that business isn't the rough-and-tumble game it used to be. He realizes that he'll do for the workrooms, but not for the front shop. He knows that if he wants to keep on growing he's got to have what they call a steerer. Somebody smooth, and polished, and politic, and what the highbrows call suave. Do you pronounce that with a long _a_, or two dots over? Anyway, you get me. You're all those things and considerable few besides. He's wise to the fact that a business man's got to have poise these days, and balance. And when it comes to poise and balance, Mrs. McChesney, you make a Fairbanks scale look like a raft at sea.”
“While I don't want to seem to hurry you,” drawled Mrs. McChesney, “might I suggest that you shorten the overture and begin on the first act?”
“Well, you know how I feel about your business genius.”