“You couldn’t get forty-nine thousand for that house,” he said, “if the window-panes was diamonds already.”

“No?” Abe retorted.  “Well, then, I’ll keep it, Mister——­”

“Marks,” suggested Mr. Marks.

“Marks,” Abe went on.  “I’ll keep it, Mr. Marks, until I can get it, so sure as my name is Abe Potash.”

“Of Potash & Perlmutter?” Mr. Marks asked.

“That’s my name,” Abe said.

“Why, then, your partner owns yet the house next door!” Mr. Marks cried.

“That ain’t no news to me, Mr. Marks,” Abe said.  “In fact, he built that house, Mr. Marks, and I got so tired hearing about the way that house rents and how much money he is going to get out of it that I bought the place next door myself.”

“But ain’t that a funny thing that one partner should build a house and the other partner shouldn’t have nothing to do with it?” Mr. Marks commented.

“We was partners in cloaks, Mr. Marks, not in houses,” Abe explained.  “And I had my chance to go in with him and I was a big fool I didn’t took it.”

Mr. Marks rose to his feet.

“Well, all I can say is,” he rejoined, “if I got it a partner and we was to consider a proposition of building, Mr. Potash, we would go it together, not separate.”

“Yes, Mr. Marks,” Abe agreed, “if you had it a partner, Mr. Marks, that would be something else again, but the partner what I got it, Mr. Marks, you got no idee what an independent feller that is.  I can assure you, Mr. Marks, that feller don’t let me know nothing what he is doing outside of our business.  For all I would know, he might of sold his house already.”

“You don’t mean to say that his house is on the market, do you?” Marks said sharply.

“I don’t mean to say nothing,” Abe replied, as he started to leave.  “All I mean to say is that I am tired of waiting for that lowlife Rothschild, and I must get back to my store.”

“Wait a bit; I’ll go downstairs with you,” Marks broke in.

As they walked down to the elevated road they exchanged further confidences, by which it appeared that Mr. Marks was in the furniture business on Third Avenue, and that he lived on Lenox Avenue near One Hundred and Sixteenth Street.

“Why, you are practically a neighbor of Mawruss Perlmutter,” Abe cried.

“Is that so?” Mr. Marks said, as they reached the elevated railway.

“Yes,” Abe went on, “he lives on a Hundred and Eighteenth Street and Lenox Avenue.”

“You don’t say so?” Mr. Marks replied.  “Well, Mr. Potash, I guess I got to leave you here.”

They shook hands, and after Abe had proceeded half-way up the steps to the station platform he paused to observe Mr. Marks penciling an address in his memorandum book.

When he again entered his show-room Morris had just hung up the telephone receiver.

“Yes, Abe,” he said, “you’ve gone and stuck your feet in it all right.”