"At last you got to admit it, Mawruss," he cried; "but anyhow, Mawruss,
go ahead and finish up this here permanent-mortgage-loan business, and
then, Mawruss, I will do all I can to help you out."

Morris rose to his feet.

"Well, Abe," he began in shaking tones, "I must got to say that I----"

"Lookyhere, Mawruss," Abe broke in savagely, "ain't we fooled away
enough time here this morning? Just because you got your troubles with
this here building, Mawruss, ain't no reason why we shouldn't attend to
business, Mawruss."

He handed Morris a black cigar, and as they started for the cutting-room
they gave vent to their pent-up emotions in great clouds of comforting
smoke.

The next fortnight was fraught with so many disagreeable experiences for
Morris that he appeared to age visibly, and once more Abe was moved to
express his sympathy.

"You shouldn't take on so, Mawruss," he said, the morning after the
permanent loan was closed. "The first thing you know, Mawruss, you will
be getting a nervous break-up, already."

"I bet yer I would get a nervous break-up, Abe," Morris agreed. "If you
would be me, Abe, you would get a nervous break-up, too. In the first
place, Abe, I got to pay them suckers--them archy-tecks, Pinsky & Gubin,
a hundred dollars before they would give it me their final certificate,
and then, Abe, I got to _schmier_ it a feller in the tenement-house
department another hundred dollars. And then, Abe, I told it them other
two crooks what I thought of 'em, Abe, and you ought to hear the way
that horse-thief talks back to me, already."

"Horse-thief!" Abe said. "Which one, Mawruss?"

"That Ferdy Rothschild, Abe," Morris continued. "So sure as I stand
here, Abe, if that feller wouldn't be my wife's brother, I would make
for him a couple blue eyes he wouldn't forgot so quick."

"With a feller like that, Mawruss," Abe said, "you shouldn't bother
yourself at all. If you make a lowlife bum a couple blue eyes, he will
make you also a couple blue eyes, maybe, and that's all there is to it,
Mawruss. But when you make it a crook like Ferdy Rothschild a couple
blue eyes, then that's something else again. Such a _schwindler_ like
him, Mawruss, would turn right around and sue you in the courts yet for
damages, and the first thing you know you are stuck for a couple
thousand dollars."

"Well, I am through with him, anyhow," Morris replied, "so we wouldn't
talk no more about him. A dirty dawg like him, Abe, ain