“What for a proposition was it, Abe?” Morris asked.

“Ask me!” Abe exclaimed.  “That real estater gives me a long story about some vacant lots, and an estate, and the Independent Order Mattai Aaron, and a lot more stuff what I don’t believe the feller understands about himself.”

“But there you was talking to that real estater pretty near an hour, Abe, and you couldn’t even tell it me what he wants at all,” Morris protested.

“To tell you the truth, Mawruss,” Abe replied, “I ain’t interested in what real estaters says.  Real estaters, insurance canvassers and book agents, Mawruss, is all the same to me.  They go in by one ear and come out by the other.”

“Why, for all you know, Abe, the feller would have maybe some big bargains.”

“If you are looking for bargains like that feller got it, Mawruss,” Abe retorted, “you could find plenty of ’em by green-goods men.  If you give me my choice between gold bricks and vacant lots, Mawruss, I would say gold bricks.”

Morris turned away impatiently.

“What do you know about real estate, Abe?” he cried.

“Not much, Mawruss,” Abe admitted, “but I know one thing about gold bricks, Mawruss:  you don’t got to pay no taxes on ’em.”

That evening B. Rashkin again presented himself at the One Hundred and Eighteenth Street residence of Morris Perlmutter, and with him came Isaac Pinsky, of the firm of Pinsky & Gubin, architects.  Mr. Pinsky had a roll of blue-prints under his arm and a strong line of convincing argument at the tip of his tongue, and the combination proved too much for Morris.  Before Rashkin and Pinsky left that evening, Morris had undertaken to purchase a plot thirty-seven feet six inches by one hundred feet, adjacent to a similar plot to be purchased by Rashkin.  Moreover, he and Rashkin engaged themselves to erect two houses, one on each lot, from the plans and specifications that Pinsky held under his arm.  Each house was to be identical with the other in design, construction and material, and an appointment was then and there made for noon the next day at the office of Henry D. Feldman, attorney at law, for the purpose of more formally consummating the deal.

Thus, when Morris entered the show-room the next morning it became his duty to break the news to his partner, and he approached Abe with a now-for-it air.  “Well, Abe,” he said, “you was wrong.”

“Sure, I was, Mawruss,” Abe replied amiably.  “With you I am always wrong.  What’s the matter now?”

“You was wrong about that feller Rashkin,” Morris explained.  “He was up to my house last night, and put the same proposition up to me what he told it you yesterday, and the way I figure it, Abe, we would make money on the deal.”

“I ain’t so good on figures what you are, Mawruss,” Abe replied.  “All I can figure is I got enough to do to attend to my own business, Mawruss, without going into the building business.”