Abe rose wearily from his seat.

“Well, Leon,” he concluded, “you certainly got it more luck with your salesman as we got it with ours.  So far he ain’t sent us a single, solitary order.”

He passed down the aisle to the cashier’s desk and had almost reached the door when a restraining hand plucked at his coat tails.

“Hallo, Abe!” a voice cried.  It was Sol Klinger, whose manner of eating crullers and coffee received and merited the unfavorable attention of everybody seated at his table.  “Sit down and have a cup of coffee.”

“I had it my lunch already,” Abe replied.

“Sit down and have a cup of coffee, anyhow,” Sol Klinger coaxed.

“I wouldn’t have no coffee,” Abe said as he took the vacant chair next to Sol.  “I’ll have a cup of chocolate.  To a man in my conditions, Sol, coffee is poison already.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Abe?” Sol asked.

“I’m a sick feller, Sol,” Abe went on.  “The rheumatism I got it all over my body.  I assure you I couldn’t go out on the road this fall.  I had to hire it a salesman.”

“Is that so?” Sol Klinger replied.  “Well, we had to hire it a new salesman, too—­a young feller by the name Moe Rabiner.  Do you know him?”

“I heard about him already,” Abe said.  “How is he doing?”

“Well, in Buffalo, last week, he ain’t done hardly nothing,” said Sol; “but he’s in Chicago this week and he done a little better.  He sent us a nice order this morning, I bet yer.  Four thousand dollars from the Arcade Mercantile Company.”

Abe was swallowing a huge mouthful of cocoa, and when Sol vouchsafed this last piece of information the cocoa found its way to Abe’s pharynx, whence it was violently ejected into the face of a mild-mannered errand-boy sitting opposite.  The errand-boy wiped his face while Sol slapped Abe on the back.

“What’s the matter, Abe?” Sol asked solicitously.  “Do you got bronchitis, too, as well as rheumatism?”

“Go ahead, Sol,” Abe gasped.  “Tell me about this here order.”

“There ain’t much to tell, Abe,” Sol went on, “except that this here Rabiner does something I never heard about before in all my experience in the cloak and suit business.”

“No?” Abe croaked.  “What was that?”

“Why, this here Rabiner gets an order from Prosnauer, of the Arcade Mercantile Company, for garments what we ain’t got in our line at all,” Sol Klinger explained; “and Prosnauer furnishes us the sample garments, which we are to return to him just so soon as we can copy them, and then——­”

“S’enough,” Abe cried.  “I heard enough, Sol.  Don’t rub it in.”

“Why, what do you mean, Abe?” Sol asked.

“I mean I got it a salesman in Chicago, Sol,” Abe went on, “what ain’t sent us so much as a smell of an order.  I guess there’s only one thing for me to do, Sol, and that’s to go myself to Chicago and see what he’s up to.”