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Updated: May 12, 2025
Which burst of eloquence was interrupted abruptly by a short, squat, dark man, who seized Emma's hand in his left and Buck's in his right, and pumped them up and down vigorously. It was that volatile, voluble person known to the skirt trade as Abel I. Fromkin, of the "Fromkin Form-fit Skirt. It Clings!" "I'm looking everywhere for you!" he panted.
"No one appreciates your gift of oratory more than I do, Mr. Meyers. Your flow of language, coupled with your peculiar persuasive powers, make a combination a statue couldn't resist. But I think it would sort of rest me if Mr. Fromkin were to say a word, seeing that it's really his funeral." Abel Fromkin started nervously, and put his dead cigarette to his lips.
Ed Meyers, flushed and eager, his pink face glowing like a peony, talking, arguing, smoking, reasoning, coaxing, with the spur of a fat commission to urge him on; Abel Fromkin, with his peculiarly pallid skin made paler in contrast to the purplish-black line where the razor had passed, showing no hint of excitement except in the restless little black eyes and in the work-scarred hands that rolled cigarette after cigarette, each glowing for one brief instant, only to die down to a blackened ash the next; Emma McChesney, half fascinated, half distrustful, listening in spite of herself, and trying to still a small inner voice a voice that had never advised her ill.
The little sallow, dark man just at Meyers' elbow was gazing at her unguardedly. She felt that he had appraised her from hat to heels. Ed Meyers placed a plump hand on the little man's shoulder. "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.
McChesney's eyes. "We'll leave the firm of T. A. Buck out of this discussion, please." "Oh, very well!" Ed Meyers was unabashed. "Let's talk about Fromkin. He don't object, do you, Abe? It's just like this. He needs your smart head. You need his money. It'll mean a sure thing for you a share in a growing and substantial business.
"Can't forget those two little business misunderstandings we had, can you?" "Business understandings," corrected Emma McChesney. "Call 'em anything your little heart dictates, but listen. Fromkin knows all about you. Knows you've got a million friends in the trade, that you know skirts from the belt to the hem.
Will you marry me? I'd have said: 'Yes. Who is this?" "There! That's just it. I don't want to be impolite, or anything like that, Mrs. McChesney, but you're no kid. Not that you look your age not by ten years! But I happen to know you're teetering somewhere between thirty-six and the next top. Ain't that right?" "Is that a argument to put to a lady?" remonstrated Abel Fromkin.
"Because, fair lady, Fromkin wouldn't let me get in with a crowbar. He'll never be able to pronounce his t's right, and when he's dressed up he looks like a 'bus-boy at Mouquin's, but he can see a bluff farther than I can throw one and that's somewhere beyond the horizon, as you'll admit. Talk it over with us after dinner then?"
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.
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?" "Thanks. Not to-night." Meyers turned to the waiting elevator. "Fromkin, you go on up with the boy; I'll talk to the lady a minute."
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