The young woman of the party was seated next to him. Even before he
sat he recognized her as the daughter of Ganser, a rich brewer of the
upper East Side. He had placed himself deliberately beside her, and he
at once began advances. She showed at a glance that she was a silly,
vain girl. Her face was fat and dull; she had thin, stringy hair. She
was flabby and, in the lazy life to which the Gansers' wealth and the
silly customs of prosperous people condemned her, was already beginning
to expand in the places where she could least afford it.
He made amorous eyes at her. He laughed enthusiastically at her
foolish speeches. He addressed his pompous platitudes exclusively to
her. Within an hour he pressed her hand under the table and sighed
dramatically. When she looked at him he started and rolled his great
eyes dreamily away. Never before had she received attentions that were
not of the frankest and crudest practical nature. She was all in a
flutter at having thus unexpectedly come upon appreciation of the
beauties and merits her mirror told her she possessed. When Mrs.
Schoenberg, her aunt, rose to go, she gave Feuerstein a chance to say
in a low aside: "My queen! To-morrow at eleven--at Bloomingdale's."
Her blush and smile told him she would be there.
All left except Feuerstein and a youth he had been watching out of the
corner of his eyes--young Dippel, son of the rich drug-store man.
Feuerstein saw that Dippel was on the verge of collapse from too much
drink. As he still had his eighty-five cents, he pressed Dippel to
drink and, by paying, induced him to add four glasses of beer to his
already top-heavy burden.
"Mus' go home," said Dippel at last, rising abruptly.
Feuerstein walked with him, taking his arm to steady him. "Let's have
one more," he said, drawing him into a saloon, gently pushing him to a
seat at a table and ordering whisky. After the third large drink,
Dippel became helpless and maudlin and began to overflow with generous
sentiments. "I love you, Finkelstern, ol' man," he declared tearfully.
"They say you're a dead beat, but wha' d'I care?"
"Finkelstern," affecting drunkenness, shed tears on Dippel's shoulder,
denied that he was a "beat" and swore that he loved Dippel like a
brother. "You're my frien'," he said. "I know you'd trust me to any
amount."
Dippel took from his trousers pocket a roll of bills several inches
thick. Feuerstein thrilled and his eyes grew eloquent as he noted tens
and twenties and at least one fifty. Slowly, and with exaggerated
care, Dippel drew off a ten. "There y'are, ol' dead beat," he said.
"I'll stake you a ten. Lots more where that came from--soda-fountain
counter's reg'lar gol' mine."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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