mean I am eating only a tongue sandwich and a cup coffee in
Hammersmith's just now," Morris went on, "and who should I see at the
next table but Louis Kleiman of Kleiman & Elenbogen. That's a dirty
lowlife, that feller, Abe! A cut-throat like him should be making money
in business! Honestly, Abe, when I see decent, respectable fellers like
----"

"Say, lookyhere, Mawruss," Abe said, "let me go to my lunch, will you?
I'm hungry."

"Hungry, _sagt er_!" Morris retorted. "A feller makes a god of his
stomach, y'understand, and his business is nothing at all. For all you
care, Abe, our whole trade could fail on us, so long as you could eat.
Everybody says the same thing; the feller's ----"

"Do me the favour, Mawruss," Abe begged; "tell me about it afterward.
All I am eating for my breakfast is one egg, so sure as you're standing
there."

"All right, Abe; I wouldn't keep you no longer," Morris said. "If you
could got it in your heart to eat, when one of your best customers is
busting up on you, go ahead."

"Our best customer?" Abe cried--"Mandelberger Brothers & Company?"

"_Geh weg_, you fool!" Morris exclaimed angrily. "Why should a
millionaire concern like Mandelberger Brothers & Company got to fail?
You talk like a lunatic."

Once more Abe seized his hat.

"I got enough of your nonsense, Mawruss," he said, starting for the
elevator.

"Wait!" Morris cried, grabbing him by the arm. "Did you ship any goods
to Felix Geigermann yet?"

"Felix Geigermann?" Abe repeated. "Is that the feller?"

Morris nodded, and this time Abe hung up his hat and sat down heavily in
the nearest chair.

"Who says he's going to fail?" he asked.

"Everybody says so," Morris replied; "even in the papers they got it."

He handed Kleiman's paper to Abe and indicated the paragraph with a
shaking forefinger.

"Where does it say he is going to fail?" Abe asked after he had read it
over hastily.

"Where does it say it?" Morris cried. "Why, if a feller goes to work and
pays three thousand dollars for a fiddle, Abe, while he only got a
business rated twenty-five to thirty thousand, credit fair, ain't it as
plain as the nose on your face he must got to fail?"

Once more Abe read over the paragraph and then the paper fell from his
hands to the floor.

"Why, Mawruss," he gasped, "it says here he is paying three thousand
dollars for an Amati which he had in his possession for some time. That
must be the very fiddle which he is playing on