The blood surged suddenly to Aaron's face.

"You!" he stammered. "Why, Mr. Potash, I never knew you was interested
in violins."

"Sure; why not?" Abe replied. "Let me have a look at it."

First he squinted into the right "eff" hole and he grunted in approval
as he spied the label, which read as follows:

NICOLAUS AMATI CREMONENSIS
Faciebat Anno 1670

"Do you know anything about them old violins?" Aaron asked anxiously.

Abe smiled in a superior way.

"Not a whole lot, Aaron," he said, but by the time he had finished his
examination Aaron became convinced that his employer was indeed one of
the _cognoscenti_. First Abe turned the violin upside down and
scrutinized the scroll, neck, belly, and back. Then he blew into the
"eff" holes; and wetting his finger he rubbed the varnish. For five
minutes he pursued the tactics of Mozart Rabiner and even added one or
two fancy touches on his own account, until at length he laid down the
instrument with a profound sigh.

"Always the same thing, Shellak," he said; "people says it is a genu-ine
and it ain't."

Aaron took up his violin and looked at it through new eyes.

"Why ain't it genu-ine?" he asked.

"I should tell you why it ain't!" Abe exclaimed. "If you would know what
I know about them things, Shellak, you wouldn't ask me such a question
at all. Do you doubt my word?"

"Why should I doubt your word, Mr. Potash?" Aaron said. "In the inside
is the paper and that's all I know about it. So, if you would give me a
hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Potash, you could keep the fiddle, bow,
case _und fertig_."

For some minutes they haggled over the bargain, and at length they
closed at a hundred and twenty-five dollars, for which Abe gave Shellak
his personal check.

[Illustration: "Do you know anything about them old violins?"]

"And you shouldn't say nothing to Mr. Perlmutter about it," Abe
concluded, "because I want to make a present of it as a surprise to my
partner."

* * * * *

When Abe came downtown the following morning he wore so marked an air of
pleased mystery that Morris became irritated.

"Let me in on this too, Abe," he said.

"Let you in on what, Mawruss?" Abe asked innocently. "I don't know what
you mean at all."

"You know very well what I mean," Morris rejoined. "You ain't coming
around here grinning like a barn door for nothing."

"I give you right about that, Mawruss," Abe said. "I got in a good