Six months later Abe was scanning the columns of the Daily Cloak and Suit Record while Morris examined the morning mail.

"Yes, Mawruss," he said at length. "Some people get only what they deserve. I always said it, some day Philip Hahn will be sorry he treated us the way he did. I bet yer he's sorry now."

"So far what I hear, Abe," Morris replied, "he ain't told us nor n.o.body else that he's sorry. In fact, I seen him coming out of Sammet Brothers'

yesterday, and he looked at me like he would treat us worser already, if he could. What makes you think he's sorry, Abe?"

"Well," Abe went on, "if he _ain't_ sorry he _ought_ to be."

He handed the Daily Cloak and Suit Record to Morris and indicated the New Business column with his thumb.

"Rochester, N. Y.," it read. "Philip Hahn, doing business here as the Flower City Credit Outfitting Company, announces that he has taken into partnership Emanuel Gubin, who recently married Mr. Hahn's niece. The business will be conducted under the old firm style."

Morris handed back the paper with a smile.

"I seen Leon Sammet on the subway this morning and he told me all about it," he commented. "He says Gubin eloped with her."

Abe shook his head.

"You got it wrong, Mawruss. You must be mistaken," he concluded. "_She_ eloped with Gubin."

CHAPTER VIII

"You carry a fine stock, Mr. Sheitlis," Abe Potash exclaimed as he glanced around the well-filled shelves of the Suffolk Credit Outfitting Company.

"That ain't all the stock I carry," Mr. Sheitlis, the proprietor, exclaimed. "I got also another stock which I am anxious to dispose of it, Mr. Potash, and you could help me out, maybe."

Abe smiled with such forced amiability that his mustache was completely engulfed between his nose and his lower lip.

"I ain't buying no cloaks, Mr. Sheitlis," he said. "I'm selling 'em."

"Not a stock from cloaks, Mr. Potash," Mr. Sheitlis explained; "but a stock from gold and silver."

"I ain't in the jewelry business, neither," Abe said.

"That ain't the stock what I mean," Mr. Sheitlis cried. "Wait a bit and I'll show you."

He went to the safe in his private office and returned with a crisp parchment-paper certificate bearing in gilt characters the legend, Texas-Nevada Gold and Silver Mining Corporation.

"This is what I mean it," he said; "stock from stock exchanges. I paid one dollar a share for this hundred shares."

Abe took the certificate and gazed at it earnestly with unseeing eyes.

Mr. Sheitlis had just purchased a liberal order of cloaks and suits from Potash & Perlmutter, and it was, therefore, a difficult matter for Abe to turn down this stock proposition without offending a good customer.

"Well, Mr. Sheitlis," he commenced, "me and Mawruss Perlmutter we do business under a copartnership agreement, and it says we ain't supposed to buy no stocks from stock exchanges, and----"

"I ain't asking you to buy it," Mr. Sheitlis broke in. "I only want you to do me something for a favor. You belong in New York where all them stock brokers is, so I want you should be so kind and take this here stock to one of them stock brokers and see what I can get for it. Maybe I could get a profit for it, and then, of course, I should pay you something for your trouble."

"Pay me something!" Abe exclaimed in accents of relief. "Why, Mr.

Sheitlis, what an idea! Me and Mawruss would be only too glad, Mr.

Sheitlis, to try and sell it for you, and the more we get it for the stock the gladder we would be for your sake. I wouldn't take a penny for selling it if you should make a million out of it."

"A million I won't make it," Mr. Sheitlis replied, dismissing the subject. "I'll be satisfied if I get ten dollars for it."

He walked toward the front door of his store with Abe.

"What is the indications for spring business in the wholesale trade, Mr.

Potash," he asked blandly.

Abe shook his head.

"It should be good, maybe," he replied; "only, you can't tell nothing about it. Silks is the trouble."

"Silks?" Mr. Sheitlis rejoined. "Why, silks makes goods sell high, Mr.

Potash. Ain't it? Certainly, I admit it you got to pay more for silk piece goods as for cotton piece goods, but you take the same per cent.

profit on the price of the silk as on the price of the cotton, and so you make more in the end. Ain't it?"

"If silk piece goods is low or middling, Mr. Sheitlis," Abe replied sadly, "there is a good deal in what you say. But silk is high this year, Mr. Sheitlis, so high you wouldn't believe me if I tell you we got to pay twicet as much this year as three years ago already."

Mr. Sheitlis clucked sympathetically.

"And if we charge the retailer twicet as much for a garment next year what he pays three years ago already, Mr. Sheitlis," Abe went on, "we won't do no business. Ain't it? So we got to cut our profits, and that's the way it goes in the cloak and suit business. You don't know where you are at no more than when you got stocks from stock exchanges."

"Well, Mr. Potash," Sheitlis replied encouragingly, "next season is next season, but now is this season, and from the prices what you quoted it me, Mr. Potash, you ain't going to the poorhouse just yet a while."

"I only hope it that you make more profit on the stock than we make it on the order you just give us," Abe rejoined as he shook his customer's hand in token of farewell. "Good-by, Mr. Sheitlis, and as soon as I get back in New York I'll let you know all about it."

Two days after Abe's return to New York he sat in Potash & Perlmutter's show-room, going over next year's models as published in the Daily Cloak and Suit Record. His partner, Morris Perlmutter, puffed disconsolately at a cigar which a compet.i.tor had given him in exchange for credit information.

"Them cigars what Klinger & Klein hands out," he said to his partner, "has asbestos wrappers and excelsior fillers, I bet yer. I'd as lief smoke a kerosene lamp."

"You got your worries, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Just look at them next year's models, Mawruss, and a little thing like cigars wouldn't trouble you at all. Silk, soutache and b.u.t.tons they got it, Mawruss. I guess pretty soon them Paris people will be getting out garments trimmed with solitaire diamonds."

Morris seized the paper and examined the half-tone cuts with a critical eye.

"You're right, Abe," he said. "We'll have our troubles next season, but we take our profit on silk goods, Abe, the same as we do on cotton goods."

Abe was about to retort when a wave of recollection came over him, and he clutched wildly at his breast pocket.

"Ho-ly smokes!" he cried. "I forgot all about it."

"Forgot all about what?" Morris asked.

"B. Sheitlis, of the Suffolk Credit Outfitting Company," Abe replied.

"He give me a stock in Pittsburg last week, and I forgot all about it."