Abe puffed hard on his cigar for a moment.

“Couldn’t you get from the old man a guarantee of the account maybe?” he asked.

“I sent Klein around there this morning, Abe,” Klinger answered, “and Pfingst says if Kleebaum is good enough to marry his daughter, he’s good enough for us to sell goods to, and certainly, Abe, you couldn’t blame the old man neither.”

Abe nodded, and a moment later he rose to leave.

“You shouldn’t look so worried about it, Abe,” Sol Klinger said.  “Everybody is selling that feller this year.”

“Well, Mawruss,” Abe cried on Tuesday morning, “I got to confess that I ain’t learned nothing new about that feller Kleebaum.  Everybody what I seen it speaks very highly of him, Mawruss, and the way I figure it, he bought goods for fifty thousand dollars in the last four days.  Klinger & Klein sold him, Sammet Brothers sold him, and even Lapidus & Elenbogen ain’t left out.  I couldn’t understand it at all.”

“Couldn’t you?” Morris retorted.  “Well, I could, Abe.  That feller is increasing his business, Abe, because he’s got good backing, y’understand.  He’s engaged to be married to Julie Pfingst and her father Joseph Pfingst is a millionaire.”

“Sure, I know, Mawruss, I seen lots of them millionaires in my time already.  Millionaires which everyone thinks is millionaires until the first meeting of creditors, and then, Mawruss, they make a composition for twenty cents cash and thirty cents notes at three, six and nine months.  Multi-millionaires sometimes pay twenty-five cents cash, but otherwise the notes is the same like millionaires, three, six and nine months, and you could wrap up dill pickles in ’em for all the good they’ll do you.”

“What are you talking nonsense, Abe?  This feller, Pfingst, is a millionaire.  He’s got a big oitermobile business and sells ten cars a week at twenty-five hundred dollars apiece.  Here it is only Tuesday, Abe, and that feller sold two oitermobiles already.”

“Did you count ’em, Mawruss?” Abe asked.

“Sure, I counted ’em,” Morris replied.  He looked boldly into Abe’s eyes as he spoke.  “One of ’em he sold to Sol Klinger and the other he sold to me.”

If Morris anticipated making a sensation he was not disappointed.  For ten minutes Abe struggled to sort out a few enunciable oaths from the mass of profanity that surged through his brain and at length he succeeded.

“I always thought you was crazy, Mawruss,” he said after the first paroxysm had exhausted itself, “and now I know it.”

“Why am I crazy?” Morris asked.  “When a feller lives out in Johnsonhurst you must practically got to have an oitermobile, otherwise you are a dead one.  And anyhow, Abe, couldn’t I spend my money the way I want to?”

“Sure, you could,” Abe said.  “But you didn’t spend it the way you wanted to, Mawruss.  Kleebaum got you to buy the oitermobile.  Ain’t it?”