“You don’t believe nothing, Mawruss,” Abe concluded as he made for the cutting-room; “you’re a regular amethyst.”

“With a feller like Kuhner,” Marks Pasinsky declared on the following Monday, “you couldn’t be a cheap skate, Mr. Potash.”

“I always sold it Kuhner, too,” Abe replied; “but I never spent it so much as three hundred dollars in one week in Chicago.”

“Sure, I know,” Pasinsky agreed, “but how much did you sell Kuhner?  A thousand or two thousand at the outside.  With me, Mr. Potash, I wouldn’t bother myself to stop off in Chicago at all if I couldn’t land at least a five-thousand-dollar order from Simon Kuhner, of Mandleberger Brothers & Co., and we will say four thousand with Chester Prosnauer, of the Arcade Mercantile Company.”

It lacked half an hour of Marks Pasinsky’s train-time, and, in addition, Abe had grown a little weary of his parting instructions to his newly-hired salesman.  Indeed, the interview had lasted all the forenoon, and it would have been difficult to decide who was doing the instructing.

“S’enough,” Abe cried.  “Let’s make an end.  I’ll speak to my partner about it, and if he says it’s all right I’m agreeable.”

He repaired to the cutting-room, where Morris chafed at the delay in Pasinsky’s departure.

“Ain’t that feller gone yet, Abe?” he asked.

“I’m just giving him a few last advices,” Abe replied.

“Well, I hope you’re more successful as I was, Abe,” Morris rejoined.  “That feller’s got so much to say for himself I couldn’t get a word in sideways.”

Abe nodded.

“He’s a good talker,” he said, “only he’s too ambitious, Mawruss.”

“He shouldn’t get ambitious around me, Abe,” Morris retorted, “because I wouldn’t stand for it.  What’s he getting ambitious with you about?”

“Well, he wants it three hundred dollars for expenses one week in Chicago already,” Abe answered.

“What!” Morris cried.

“He says he got to do some tall entertaining, Mawruss,” Abe went on, “because he expects to sell Simon Kuhner a five-thousand-dollars bill of goods, and the Arcade Mercantile Company also five thousand.”

“Say, looky here, Abe:  I want to tell you something,” Morris broke in.  “Of course, this ain’t my affair nor nothing, because you got the rheumatism and it’s your funeral.  Also, I am only a partner here, y’understand, and what I says goes for nix.  But the way it looks to me now, Abe, if this here Pasinsky sells all the goods he talks about, Abe, we will got to have four times more capital as we are working with now.  And if he spends it three hundred dollars in every town he makes we wouldn’t have no capital left at all.  And that’s the way it goes.”

He turned and strode angrily away, while Abe went back to the show-room.

“Well, Pasinsky,” he said, “I decided I would take a chance and advance you the three hundred; but you got to do the business, Pasinsky, otherwise it is all off.”