lare flatly that
Abe's gift was a bogus Amati might offend him seriously, while to admit
that it was genuine, but only worth one hundred dollars, was to foster
Abe's notion that he, Felix, had wasted three thousand dollars on a
similar violin.

"I want to tell you something, Abe," he began at last. "There's nothing
to this business of selling goods by making presents, and I for one
don't believe in it. So I'll tell you what I'll do. Come up here to the
store to-morrow morning, and I'll get the fiddle from my house and give
it back to you."

Abe's scowl merged immediately into a wide grin.

"I don't want the fiddle back, Felix," he said, "but my partner,
y'understand, he is the one which is always----"

"Say no more, Abe," Felix cried. "All I want is you should ship that
order; and tell your partner, if he is scared I am spending my money
foolishly, he can have a new statement whenever he wants it; and I'll
swear to it on a truckload of Bibles."

When Abe returned to his place of business that afternoon he expected to
find Morris pacing up and down the showroom floor, the picture of
distracted anxiety. Instead he was humming a cheerful melody as he piled
up two-piece velvet suits.

"Well, Abe," he said, "you have went on a fool's errand, ain't it?"

"What d'ye mean, fool's errand?" Abe demanded.

"Why, I mean I knew all along that fiddle of yours was a fake; and
anyhow, Abe, I seen Milton Strauss, of Klipmann, Strauss & Bleimer, and
what d'ye suppose he told it me, Abe?"

Abe shrugged angrily.

"If you must got to get it off your chest before I tell you what
Geigermann told to me, Mawruss," he said, "go ahead."

"Well, I seen Milton Strauss, Abe," Morris went on calmly, "and he says
to me that he knows for a positive fact that Felix Geigermann could have
sold that fiddle of his for three thousand five hundred dollars before
he even pays for it yet. Strauss says that Felix is all the time buying
up old fiddles for a side line, and if he makes a cent at it he makes a
couple thousand dollars a year. Furthermore, Abe, he says that if
anybody's got a genu-ine who's-this fiddle, he wouldn't let it go for no
hundred and twenty-five dollars, and the chances is you are paying a
fancy figure for a cheap popular-price line of fiddles."

Abe hung up his hat so violently that he nearly knocked a hole in the
crown.

"In the first place, Mawruss," he began, "it was your idee I should go
up there and get the fiddle back