“But, Abe,” Morris began, when the telephone bell trilled impatiently.  Abe took up the receiver.

“Hallo!” he said.  “Yes, this is Potash.  Oh, hallo, Feinholz!”

“Say, Potash,” Feinholz said at the other end of the wire, “we got the store full of people here.  Couldn’t you send up them capes right away?”

Abe put his hand over the mouthpiece of the ’phone.

“It’s Feinholz,” he said to Morris.  “He wants them capes right away.  What shall I tell him?”

“Tell him nothing,” Morris cried.  “The first thing you know you will say something to that feller, and he sues us yet for damages because we didn’t deliver the goods.”

Abe hesitated for a minute.

“You talk to him,” he said at length.

Morris seized the receiver from his partner.

“Hallo, Feinholz,” he yelled.  “We don’t want nothing to say to you at all.  We are through with you.  That’s all.  Good-by.”

He hung up the receiver and turned to Abe.

“When I deal with a crook like Feinholz,” he said, “I’m afraid for my life.”

Ten minutes later he went out to lunch and when he returned he brandished the early edition of an evening paper.

“What you think it says here, Abe?” he cried.  “It says the fire downstairs was caused by an operator throwing a cigarettel in the clipping bin.  Ain’t that a quincidence, Abe?”

“I bet yer that’s a quincidence,” Abe replied.  “A couple more of them quincidences, Mawruss, and we got to pay double for our insurance.  I only wish we would be finished collecting on our policies for this here quincidence, Mawruss.”

Morris shrugged his shoulders and was about to make a reassuring answer when the door opened and two men entered.

One of them was Samuel Feder, vice-president of the Kosciusko Bank, and the other was Louis Feinholz, proprietor of the Longchamps Store.

“Well, Abe,” Feder cried, “what’s this I hear about the fire?”

“Come into the office, Mr. Feder,” Abe cried, while Morris greeted Feinholz.  “Morris will be through soon.”

“Say, Mawruss,” Feinholz said.  “What’s the matter with you boys?  Here I got to come downtown about them capes, and my whole store’s full of people.  Why didn’t you ship them capes back to me like I told you?”

“Look a-here, Feinholz,” Morris exclaimed in tones sufficiently loud for Feder to overhear, “what d’ye take us for, anyhow?  Greenhorns?  Do you think you can write us a dirty letter like that and then come down and get them capes just for the asking?”

“Ain’t you getting touchy all of a sudden, Mawruss?” Feinholz cried excitedly.  “You had no business to deliver them goods in such rotten weather.  You know as well as I do that I couldn’t use them goods till fine weather sets in, and now I want ’em, and I want ’em bad.”

“Is that so?” Morris replied.  “Why, I thought them garments was no good, Feinholz.  I thought them capes wasn’t up to sample.”