“I know, Abe,” Morris protested; “but the loft upstairs is vacant and the loft downstairs is vacant, and everybody ain’t so grouchy about cigarettels like you are, Abe.  Might one of them lofts would be taken by a feller what is already a cigarettel fiend, Abe.  And fires can start by other causes, too; and then where would we be with our twenty thousand insurance and all them piece goods what we got it?”

“But the building is fireproof, Mawruss.”

“Sure I know,” Morris replied; “fireproof buildings is like them gilt-edge, A Number One concerns what you sell goods to for ten years, maybe, and then all of a sudden when you don’t expect it one of ’em busts up on you.  And that’s the way it is with fireproof buildings, Abe.  They’re fireproof so long as nobody has a fire in ’em.”

Abe shrugged his shoulders and lit a fresh cigar.

“All right, Mawruss,” Abe said; “I’m satisfied.  If you want to get some more insurance, go ahead.  I got worry enough I should bother my head about trifles.  A little money for insurance we can afford to spend it, Mawruss, so long as we practically throw it in the streets otherwise.”

“Otherwise?” Morris repeated.  “What do you mean we throw it away otherwise, Abe?”

“I mean that new style thirty-twenty-eight what you showed it me this morning, Mawruss,” Abe replied.  “For a popular-price line, Mawruss, them new capes has got enough buttons and soutache on to ’em to sell for twenty dollars already instead of twelve-fifty.”

“That’s where you talk without knowing nothing what you say, Abe,” Morris replied.  “That garment what you seen it is the winder sample what I made it up for Louis Feinholz’s uptown store.  Louis give me a big order while you was in Boston last week, a special line of capes what I got up for him to retail at eighteen-fifty.  But he also wanted me to make up for him a winder sample, just one garment to hang in the winder what would look like them special capes, Abe, y’understand, something like a diamond looks like a rhinestone.  Then, when a lady sees that cape in the winder, she wants to buy one just like it, so she goes into Louis’ store and they show her one just like it, only three inches shorter, a yard less goods into it, about half the soutache on to it and a dozen buttons short, Abe; because that winder garment what we make for Louis costs us ourselves twenty-five dollars, and Louis retails the garment what he sells that lady for eighteen-fifty.  And that’s the way it goes.”

“That’s a fine crook, that Louis Feinholz,” Abe cried virtuously.  “I wonder that you would sell people like that goods at all, Mawruss.  That feller ain’t no good, Mawruss.  I seen him go back three times on four hundred hands up at Max Geigerman’s house last week, a dollar a hundred double-double.  He’s a gambler, too.”

“Well, Abe,” Morris answered, “a feller what runs a chance on auction pinochle ain’t near the gambler like a feller what is willing to run a chance on his business burning out and don’t carry no insurance, Abe.”