hellak--a
cloak-and-suit house _oder_ a theayter?"

Aaron hastily replaced the instrument in its case.

"I am only showing it to Nathan," he mumbled by way of explanation.
"Might he would like to buy it maybe."

"If you want to sell fiddles, Shellak," Abe said, "do it outside
business hours. That's all I got to say."

He proceeded at once to the showroom, where Morris was peeling off his
overcoat. The latter greeted Abe with a sour nod. "I am sick and tired
of it, Abe," he declared. "Everybody is stealing our business."

"What d'ye mean, everybody's stealing our business?" Abe asked.

"Last night I am sitting in the Harlem Winter Garden with Felix
Geigermann, and Leon Sammet butts in on us and tells Geigermann he's got
a cousin which he could play shello, and Geigermann says that he should
come around to the house next Tuesday and play it with him and Rabiner."

Abe shrugged his shoulders.

"My _tzuris_ if he does, Mawruss," he said; "because while I don't know
nothing about this here game, y'understand, a good way to lose a
customer is to play cards with him."

"What are you talking nonsense, Abe?" Morris cried. "Shello ain't cards.
A shello is a fiddle which you play it with your knees."

"For my part he could play it with his nose, Mawruss," Abe declared
hotly. "Do you mean to told me, Mawruss, that a business man like
Geigermann is going to buy a line of goods like Sammet Brothers got it
just because Leon Sammet's cousin plays a fiddle with his knees?"

"Yow! His cousin?" Morris exclaimed. "He's as much got a cousin which he
plays the shello as I got one. He's going to give some greenhorn a
couple of dollars to go with him to Geigermann's house and play the
fiddle; and the first thing you know, Abe, Geigermann is buying from him
a big bill of goods and all the time our orders gets smaller and smaller
till we lose his trade altogether."

Abe laughed mirthlessly and bit the end off his after-breakfast cigar.

"If I would worry myself the way you do, Mawruss, every time a
competitor says 'Hello' to a customer of ours," he said as he turned
away, "I would gone crazy in the head _schon_ long since ago already."

Nevertheless he pondered Leon Sammet's move all the morning, and after
Morris had gone to lunch he paced the showroom floor for more than a
quarter of an hour in an effort to formulate some plan for regaining
Geigermann's business. His reflections were at length interrupted by a
faint scraping fro