"Everybody gives it their bookkeeper a vacation, Abe," Morris protested.

"Do they?" Abe rejoined. "Well, if bookkeepers gets vacations, Mawruss, where are we going to stop? First thing you know, Mawruss, we'll be giving cutters vacations, and operators vacations, and before we get through we got our workroom half empty yet and paying for full time already. If she wants a vacation for two weeks I ain't got no objections, Mawruss, only we don't pay her no wages while she's gone."

"You can't do that, Abe," Morris said. "That would be laying her off, Abe; that wouldn't be no vacation."

"But we got to have somebody here to keep our books while she's away, Mawruss," Abe cried. "We got to make it a living, Mawruss. We can't shut down just because Miss Cohen gets a vacation. And so it stands, Mawruss, we got to pay Miss Cohen wages for doing _nothing_, Mawruss, and also we got to pay it wages to somebody else for doing something what Miss Cohen should be doing when she ain't, ain't it?"

"Sure, we got to get a subst.i.tute for her while she's away," Morris agreed; "but I guess it won't break us."

"All right, Mawruss," Abe replied; "if I got to hear it all summer about this here vacation business I'm satisfied. I got enough to do in the store without worrying about that, Mawruss. Only one thing I got to say it, Mawruss: we got to have a bookkeeper to take her place while she's away, and you got to attend to _that_, Mawruss. That's all I got to say."

Morris nodded and hastened to break the good news to Miss Cohen, who for the remainder of the week divided her time between Potash & Perlmutter's accounts and a dozen multicolored railroad folders.

"Look at that, Mawruss," Abe said as he gazed through the gla.s.s paneling of the show-room toward the bookkeeper's desk. "That girl ain't done it a stroke of work since we told her she could go already. What are we running here, anyway: a cloak and suit business or a cut-rate ticket office?"

"Don't you worry about _her_, Abe," Morris replied. "She's got her cashbook and daybook posted and she also got it a subst.i.tute. He's coming this afternoon."

"_He's_ coming?" Abe said. "So she got it a young _feller_, Mawruss?"

"Well, Abe," Morris replied, "what harm is there in that? He's a decent, respectable young feller by the name Tuchman, what works as bookkeeper by the Koscius...o...b..nk. They give him a two weeks' vacation and he comes to work by us, Abe."

"That's a fine way to spend a vacation, Mawruss," Abe commented. "Why don't he go up to Tannersville or so?"

"Because he's got to help his father out nights in his cigar store what he keeps it on Avenue B," Morris answered. "His father is Max Tuchman's brother. You know Max Tuchman, drummer for Lapidus & Elenbogen?"

"Sure I know him--a loud-mouth feller, Mawruss; got a whole lot to say for himself. A sport and a gambler, too," Abe said. "He'd sooner play auction pinochle than eat, Mawruss. I bet you he turns in an expense account like he was on a honeymoon every trip. The last time I seen this here Max Tuchman was up in Duluth. He was riding in a buggy with the lady buyer from Moe Gerschel's cloak department."

"Well, I suppose he sold her a big bill of goods, too, Abe, ain't it?"

Morris rejoined. "He's an up-to-date feller, Abe. If anybody wants to sell goods to lady buyers they got to be up-to-date, ain't it? And so far what I hear it n.o.body told it me you made such a big success with lady buyers, neither, Abe."

Abe shrugged his shoulders.

"That ain't here nor there, Mawruss," he grunted. "The thing is this: if this young feller by the name of Tuchman does Miss Cohen's work as good as Miss Cohen does it I'm satisfied."

There was no need for apprehension on that score, however, for when the subst.i.tute bookkeeper arrived he proved to be an accurate and industrious young fellow, and despite Miss Cohen's absence the work of Potash & Perlmutter's office proceeded with orderly dispatch.

"That's a fine young feller, Mawruss," Abe commented as he and his partner sat in the firm's show-room on the second day of Miss Cohen's vacation.

"Who's this you're talking about?" Morris asked.

"This here bookkeeper," Abe replied. "What's his first name, now, Mawruss?"

"Ralph," Morris said.

"Ralph!" Abe cried. "That's a name I couldn't remember it in a million years, Mawruss."

"Why not, Abe?" Morris replied. "Ralph ain't no harder than Moe or Jake, Abe. For my part, I ain't got no trouble in remembering that name; and anyhow, Abe, why should an up-to-date family like the Tuchmans give their boys such back-number names like Jake or Moe?"

"Jacob and Moses was decent, respectable people in the old country, Mawruss," Abe corrected solemnly.

"I know it, Abe," Morris rejoined; "but that was long since many years ago already. _Now_ is another time entirely in New York City; and anyhow, with such names what we got it in our books, Abe, you shouldn't have no trouble remembering Ralph."

"Sure not," Abe agreed, dismissing the subject. "So, I'll call him Ike.

For two weeks he wouldn't mind it."

Morris shrugged. "For my part, you can call him Andrew Carnegie," he said; "only, let's not stand here talking about it all day, Abe. I see by the paper this morning that Marcus Bramson, from Syracuse, is at the Prince William Hotel, Abe, and you says you was going up to see him.

That's your style, Abe: an old-fashion feller like Marcus Bramson. If you couldn't sell _him_ a bill of goods, Abe, you couldn't sell _n.o.body_. He ain't no lady buyer, Abe."

Abe glared indignantly at his partner. "Well, Mawruss," he said, "if you ain't satisfied with the way what I sell goods you know what you can do.

I'll do the inside work and you can go out on the road. It's a dawg's life, Mawruss, any way you look at it; and maybe, Mawruss, you would have a good time taking buggy rides with lady buyers. For my part, Mawruss, I got something better to do with my time."

He seized his hat, still glaring at Morris, who remained quite unmoved by his partner's indignation.

"I heard it what you tell me now several times before already, Abe," he said; "and if you want it that Max Tuchman or Klinger & Klein or some of them other fellers should cop out a good customer of ours like Marcus Bramson, Abe, maybe you'll hang around here a little longer."

Abe retorted by banging the show-room door behind him, and as he disappeared into the street Morris indulged in a broad, triumphant grin.

When Abe returned an hour later he found Morris going over the monthly statements with Ralph Tuchman. Morris looked up as Abe entered.

"What's the matter, Abe?" he cried. "You look worried."

"Worried!" Abe replied. "I ain't worried, Mawruss."

"Did you seen Marcus Bramson?" Morris asked.

"Sure I seen him," said Abe; "he's coming down here at half-past three o'clock this afternoon. You needn't trouble yourself about _him_, Mawruss."

Abe hung up his hat, while Morris and Ralph Tuchman once more fell to the work of comparing the statements.

"Look a-here, Mawruss," Abe said at length: "who d'ye think I seen it up at the Prince William Hotel?"

"I ain't no mind reader, Abe," Morris replied. "Who _did_ you seen it?"

"Miss Atkinson, cloak buyer for the Emporium, Duluth," Abe replied.

"That's Moe Gerschel's store."

Morris stopped comparing the statements, while Ralph Tuchman continued his writing.

"She's just come in from the West, Mawruss," Abe went on. "She ain't registered yet when I was going out, and she won't be in the Arrival of Buyers till to-morrow morning."

"Did you speak to her?" Morris asked.

"Sure I spoke to her," Abe said. "I says good-morning, and she recognized me right away. I asked after Moe, and she says he's well; and I says if she comes down here for fall goods; and she says she ain't going to talk no business for a couple of days, as it's a long time already since she was in New York and she wants to look around her. Then I says it's a fine weather for driving just now."

He paused for a moment and looked at Morris.

"Yes," Morris said, "and what did she say?"