He banged the show-room door behind him and repaired to Wasserbauer’s Cafe and Restaurant across the street to await Henochstein’s departure.

“Mawruss is right,” Abe declared.  “You was told distinctively we wanted it two lofts, not one, and here you come back with a one-loft proposition.”

Henochstein rose to leave.

“If you think it you could get two up-to-date lofts on Seventeenth, Eighteenth or Nineteenth Street, Abe, for what you pay it here in this dinky place,” he said, “you got another think coming.”

He opened the show-room door.

“And also, Abe,” he concluded, “if I got it a partner what made it a slave of me, like Perlmutter does you, I’d go it alone, that’s all I got to say.”

After Henochstein left, Abe was a prey to bitter reflections, which were only interrupted by his partner’s return to the show-room a quarter of an hour later.

“Well, Abe,” Morris cried, “you got your turn at this here moving business; let me try a hand at it once.”

“Go ahead, Mawruss,” Abe said wearily.  “You always get your own way, anyhow.  You say I am the dawg, Mawruss, and you are the tail, but I guess you got it the wrong way round.  I guess the tail is on the other foot.”

Morris shrugged.

“That’s something what is past already, Abe,” he replied.  “I was just talking to Wasserbauer, and he says he got it a friend what is a sort of a real-estater, a smart young feller by the name Sam Slotkin.  He says if Slotkin couldn’t find it us a couple of lofts, nobody couldn’t.”

“I’m satisfied, Mawruss,” Abe said.  “If Slotkin can get us lofts we move, otherwise we stay here.  So far we made it always a living here, Mawruss, and I guess we ain’t going to lose all our customers even if we don’t move; and that’s all there is to it.”

Mr. Sam Slotkin was doubtless his own ideal of a well-dressed man.  All the contestants in a chess tournament could have played on his clothes at one time, and the ox-blood stripes on his shirt exactly matched the color of his necktie and socks.  He had concluded his interview with Morris on the morning following Henochstein’s fiasco, before Abe’s arrival at the office, and he was just leaving as Abe came in.

“Who’s that, Mawruss?” Abe asked, staring after the departing figure.

“That’s Sam Slotkin,” Morris replied.  “He looks like a bright young feller.”

“I bet yer he looks bright,” Abe commented.  “He looks so bright in them vaudeville clothes that it almost gives me eye-strain.  I suppose he says he can get us the lofts.”

“Sure,” Morris answered; “he says he can fix us up all right.”

“I hope so,” Abe said skeptically, and at once repaired to the office.  It was the tail-end of a busy season and Abe and Morris found no time to renew the topic of their forthcoming removal until two days later when Sam Slotkin again interviewed Morris.  The result was communicated to Abe by Morris after Slotkin’s departure.