“That Ferdy Rothschild, Abe,” Morris continued.  “So sure as I stand here, Abe, if that feller wouldn’t be my wife’s brother, I would make for him a couple blue eyes he wouldn’t forgot so quick.”

“With a feller like that, Mawruss,” Abe said, “you shouldn’t bother yourself at all.  If you make a lowlife bum a couple blue eyes, he will make you also a couple blue eyes, maybe, and that’s all there is to it, Mawruss.  But when you make it a crook like Ferdy Rothschild a couple blue eyes, then that’s something else again.  Such a schwindler like him, Mawruss, would turn right around and sue you in the courts yet for damages, and the first thing you know you are stuck for a couple thousand dollars.”

“Well, I am through with him, anyhow,” Morris replied, “so we wouldn’t talk no more about him.  A dirty dawg like him, Abe, ain’t worth a—­a——­” He was searching his mind for a sufficiently trivial standard of comparison when Abe interrupted him.

“I thought you wasn’t going to talk about him, Mawruss,” he said; “and, anyhow, Mawruss, what’s the use talking about things what is past already?  What we got to do now, Mawruss, is to sell that house.”

“I know it, Abe,” Morris replied ruefully, “but how are we going to sell that house with B. Rashkin going around offering to sell the identical same house for forty-four five?  If I would be lucky enough to get forty-five seven-fifty for mine, Abe, I would still be out several hundred dollars.”

“You talk foolish, Mawruss; you would get forty-seven thousand, sure, for that house.”

“Would I?” Morris cried.  “How would I do that?”

“Leave that to me,” Abe replied.

He put on his hat and coat.

“Where are you going, Abe?” Morris asked.

Abe waggled his head solemnly.

“You shouldn’t ask me, Mawruss,” he said.  “I got an idee.”

It was a quarter to twelve when Abe left the loft building on Nineteenth Street, and he repaired immediately to the real-estate salesroom on Vesey Street, where auction sales of real estate are held at noon daily.  To this center of real-estate activity comes every real-estate broker of the East Side, together with his brothers from Harlem and the Bronx, and Abe felt reasonably sure that B. Rashkin would be on hand.

Indeed, he had hardly entered the salesroom when he descried B. Rashkin standing on the outskirts of a little throng that surrounded the rostrum of a popular auctioneer.

“Now, gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, “what am I offered for this six-story, four-family house.  Remember, gentlemen, it is practically new and stands on a lot forty by a hundred.”

“Forty thousand,” said a voice at Abe’s elbow.

“Come, gentlemen,” the auctioneer cried, “we ain’t making you a present of this house, exactly.  Do I hear forty-one?  Thank you, sir.  At forty-one—­at forty-one—­at——­”

Abe sidled up to B. Rashkin and in firm tones he made the next bid.