hen," Morris protested, "you'll make yourself sick."

"I'll make _you_ sick!" Cohen rejoined. "I'll make for you a blue eye,
too. _Five thousand dollars_ I got to give her!"

Abe whistled involuntarily.

"I should think two thousand would be plenty," he suggested.

Max Cohen turned on him with another glare.

"What!" he shrieked. "Am I a beggar? Should I give my niece a miserable
two thousand dollars? Ain't I got no pride? I _got_ to make it five
thousand!" He paused while his imagination dwelt on the magnitude of
this colossal sum. "Five thousand dollars!" he shrieked again, "and
business the way it is!"

Mr. Perlmutter laid a soothing palm on Cohen's shoulder.

"But, Mr. Cohen," he said, "what can _we_ do? Why should you tell _us_
all this?"

Mr. Cohen shook off Morris's caress.

"You're right," he said. "Why should I tell you all this? I didn't come
here to tell you this. I come here to tell you something else. I come
here to tell you to cancel all orders what I give you. Also, if you or
your salesman come by my place ever again, look out; that's all. The way
I feel it now, I'll murder you!" He turned to leave. "And another
thing," he concluded. "One thing, you can depend on it. So far what I
can help it, you don't sell one dollar's worth of goods to any of my
friends, never no more!"

Again the door banged explosively, and Mr. Cohen was gone.

For ten minutes there was an awed silence in the sample room. At length
Abe looked at his partner with a sickly smile.

"Well, Mawruss," he said, "you made a nice mess of it, ain't you?"

Morris was too stunned to reply.

"That's what comes of not minding your own business," said Abe. "We lose
a good customer, and maybe several good customers. We lose a good
bookkeeper, too, Mawruss--one what has been with us for five years; and
also we are out a wedding present."

"I meant it good," Morris protested. "I done it for the best. It says in
the Talmud, Abe, that we are commanded to promote marriages."

Abe waggled his head solemnly.

"This is the first time I hear it, that you are a Talmudist, Mawruss!"
he said.

A month passed, and Miss Cohen continued to apply herself to her daily
task at Potash & Perlmutter's books.

"I don't understand it, Mawruss," Abe said one morning. "Why don't that
girl quit her job? She must have all sorts of things to do--clothes to
buy and furniture to pick out, ain't it?"

Perlmutter shrugged his shoulders.

"I spoke to her