y, what was the matter?" Morris asked.

"Well, in the first place, Mawruss, to show you what a liar that feller
Geigermann is, he brings out a fiddle which he tells us is three hundred
years old."

"Yow! Three hundred years old!" Morris exclaimed skeptically. "A fiddle
three hundred years old would be worth, the very least, a hundred or a
hundred and fifty dollars."

"That's what I told him, Mawruss," Abe said. "I says to him if I would
got a fiddle which it is worth that much money I would quick sell it and
buy something which it is anyhow useful, like a diamond ring _oder_ a
scarfpin. But Geigermann only laughs at me, Mawruss; he says he don't
own the fiddle, Mawruss, but that somebody loaned it him. Even if he
would own it, he wouldn't take two hundred dollars for it."

"My worries, if he owns the fiddle _oder_ not, Abe!" Morris commented.

"Sure, I know, Mawruss; but that ain't the point. Afterward Mozart
Rabiner comes in; and if I would be Felix Geigermann, Mawruss, and a
salesman comes into my house and gets fresh with a pianner which the
least it stands Geigermann in is a hundred dollars, Mawruss, I would
kick him into the street yet."

"What is Mozart Rabiner doing there, Abe?" Morris inquired anxiously.

Abe preserved a cheerful demeanour, although it was the circumstance of
Mozart Rabiner's prominence at Geigermann's musicale that had rendered
the evening so unbearable.

"Well, Mawruss," he explained, "you don't suppose that Geigermann buys
all his goods from us?"

Morris elevated his eyebrows gloomily.

"I don't suppose nothing, Abe," he said; "but once you let a shark like
Rabiner get in with Geigermann, Klinger & Klein would give him the
privilege to cut our price till they run us right out of there."

"It's an open market, Mawruss," Abe said, "and anyhow I am doing all I
can to keep that feller's business. You would think so if you would of
been there last night, Mawruss. First a lady in one of them two-piece
velvet suits--afterward I see the jacket; a ringer for our style
forty-two-twenty, Mawruss--she gets up on the floor, Mawruss, and she
hollers bloody murder, Mawruss. I never heard the like since that
Italiener girl which we got working for us on White Street catches her
finger in the buttonhole machine. Mozart Rabiner plays for her on the
pianner, Mawruss; and when she gets through, the way Rabiner jollies her
you would think she would be buying goods for Marshall Field yet. After
that,