Morris nodded gloomily, and they both remained silent for a few minutes.

“Mawruss,” Abe said at last, “where is that loft what Slotkin gives us?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“I’m going right up to have a look at it,” Abe replied.  “I’m sick and tired of this here strike business.”

Morris heaved a great sigh.

“I believe you, Abe,” he said.  “The way I feel it now we will sell for junk every machine what we got.”

Forthwith Abe boarded a car for uptown, and when he returned two hours later he found Goldman discussing ways and means with Morris in the show-room.

“Well, Abe,” Morris cried, “what for a loft you seen it?”

Abe hung up his hat deliberately.

“I tell you the truth, Mawruss,” he said, turning around, “the loft ain’t bad.  It’s a good-looking loft, Mawruss, only it’s certain sure we couldn’t have no machines in that loft.”

“Ai vai!” Goldman exclaimed, rocking to and fro in his chair and striking his head with his clenched fist.

“Nu Goldman?” Morris asked.  “What’s the trouble with you?”

“Troubles enough he got it, Mawruss,” Abe said, as he watched Goldman’s evolutions of woe.  “If we do away with our machines he loses his job; ain’t it?”

Sympathy seemed only to intensify Goldman’s distress.

“Better than that he should make me dizzy at my stomach to watch him, Abe,” Morris said.  “I got a suggestion.”

Goldman ceased rocking and looked up.

“I got a suggestion, Abe,” Morris went on, “that we sell it our machines on long terms of credit to Goldman, and he should go into the contracting business; ain’t it?”

“Ai vai!” Goldman cried again, and commenced to rock anew.

“Stop it, Goldman,” Abe yelled.  “What’s the trouble now?”

“What show does a feller got it what starts as a new beginner in cloak contracting already?” Goldman wailed.

“Well,” Abe replied, “you could get our work.”

Morris seized on this as a happy compromise between his own advocacy of Ginsburg & Kaplan and the rival claims of Abe’s wife’s relations.

“Sure,” he agreed.  “We will give him the work what we give now to Satinstein and Ginsburg & Kaplan.”

Goldman’s face spread into a thousand wrinkles of joy.

“You save my life!” he exclaimed.

“Only he got to agree by a lawyer he should make it up our work a whole lot cheaper as they did,” Morris concluded.

Goldman nodded vigorously.

“Sure, sure,” he said.

“And also he got to help us call off this here strike,” Abe added.

“I do my bestest,” Goldman replied.  “Only we got to see it the varking delegate first and fix it up with him.”

“Who is this walking delegate, anyhow?” Morris asked.

Goldman scratched his head to aid his memory.

“I remember it now,” he said at last.  “It’s a feller by the name Sam Slotkin.”