nything about it. I
didn't even show it to her, Dishkes; so you must leave me have it for a
day longer, Dishkes."

As he spoke he drew the cabinet photograph from his breast pocket and
handed it to Dishkes, who gazed earnestly at it for a minute. Then,
resting his elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands and
burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing, whereat Elkan jumped from his
seat and passed hurriedly out of the room. As he walked toward the
showroom the strains of a popular song came from behind a rack.

"Sam," he bellowed, "who asks you you should whistle round here?"

The whistling ceased and Sam emerged from his hiding-place with a
feather brush.

"I could whistle without being asked," Sam replied; "and furthermore,
Mr. Lubliner, when I am dusting the samples I must got to whistle;
otherwise the dust gets in my lungs, which I value my lungs the same
like you do, Mr. Lubliner, even if I would be here only a boy working on
stock!"

With this decisive rejoinder he resumed dusting the samples, while Elkan
returned to his office, where he found that Dishkes had regained his
composure.

* * * * *

Despite the fact that all of Dishkes' creditors save one had signed an
extension agreement, the meeting in Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's
showroom was well attended; and when Leon Sammet came in, at
quarter-past eleven, the assemblage had already elected Charles Finkman,
of Maisener & Finkman, as chairman. He had just taken his seat in Philip
Scheikowitz's new revolving chair and was in the act of noisily clearing
his throat in lieu of pounding the table with a gavel.

"Gentlemen," he said, "first, I want to thank you for the signal honour
you are doing me in appointing me your chairman. For sixteen years now
my labours in the Independent Order Mattai Aaron ain't unknown to most
of you here. Ten years ago, at the national convention held in
Sarahcuse, gentlemen, I was unanimously elected by the delegates from
sixty lodges to be your National Grand Master; and----"

At this juncture Leon Sammet rose ponderously to his feet.

"Say, Finkman!" retorted Sammet. "What has all this _Stuss_ about the I.
O. M. A. got to do _mit_ Dishkes here?"

Again Finkman cleared his throat, and this time he produced a note of
challenge that caused the members of the I. O. M. A. there present to
lean forward in their seats. They expected a crushing rejoinder and they
were not disappointed.

"What