the cleaners?
I don't care. You can't jolly me. Good-bye."

It was almost one o'clock before she remembered to telephone over to
Wasserbauer's, and when Sam and Max returned they dashed into the
office and exclaimed: "Well?" with what the musical critics call
splendid attack.

"He's coming over to call on me to-night," Miss Meyerson replied with a
blush, "and I'll see what I can do then."

"You see, Sam," Max commented, "I told you you shouldn't reckon up how
much chickens you will got till the hen lays 'em."

Max Fatkin visited a buyer at an uptown hotel on his way to the office
the following morning, so that it was nearly nine before he entered his
showroom. As he walked from the elevator he glanced toward Miss
Meyerson's desk. It was vacant.

"Sam," he cried, "where's Miss Meyerson?"

Sam Zaretsky emerged from behind a rack of skirts and shrugged his
shoulders.

"She's late the first time since she's been with us, Max," he replied.

"Might she is sick, maybe," Max suggested. "I'll ring up her cousin,
the doctor, and find out."

"That's a good idee," Sam replied. Max was passing the elevator door
when it opened with a scrape and a clang.

"Hallo, Max!" a familiar voice cried.

Max turned toward the elevator and gasped, for it was Pinsky who
stepped out. His wonder grew to astonishment, however, when he beheld
Aaron tenderly assisting Miss Meyerson to alight from the elevator.

"Good morning," she said. "I'm late."

"That's all right," Max cried. "Any one which is always so prompt like
you has a right to be late oncet in a while."

He looked at Aaron shyly and wet his lips with his tongue.

"Well," he began, "how's the boy?"

"Fillup is feeling fine, _Gott sei dank_," Aaron replied. "But never
mind Fillup now. I come here because I got to tell you something, Max.
Where's Sam?"

"Here I am, Aaron," Sam said, as he came fairly running from the
showroom. "And you don't got to tell us nothing, Aaron, because a
feller could buy goods where he wants to. Always up to three months ago
you was a good friend to us, Aaron, and even if you wouldn't buy
nothing from us at all we are glad to see you around here oncet in a
while, anyhow."

"But, Sam," Aaron replied, "give me a chance to say something. Goods I
ain't buying it to-day. I got other things to buy."

He turned to Miss Meyerson with a wide, affectionate grin on his kindly
face.

"Yes, Sam," he continued, "I got a two-and-a-half carat blue-white
s