“Doctors?” Abe repeated.  “What are you talking about—­doctors?”

Morris snapped his fingers impatiently.

“Doctors!  Hear me talk!” he cried.  “I meant kerseys.”

“Listen here, Mawruss,” Abe suggested.  “What’s the use you monkeying with business to-day?  Why don’t you go home?”

“Me, I don’t take things so particular, Abe,” Morris replied.  “Time enough when I got to go home, then I will go home.”

“You could do what you please, Mawruss,” Abe declared.  “We ain’t so busy now that you couldn’t be spared, y’understand.  With spring weather like we got it now, Mawruss, we could better sell arctic overshoes and raincoats as try to get rid of our line already.  I tell you the truth, Mawruss, I ain’t seen business so schlecht since way before the Spanish War already.”

“We could always find something to do, Abe,” said Morris.  “Why don’t you tell Miss Cohen to get out them statements which you was talking about?”

“That’s a good idee, Mawruss,” Abe agreed.  “Half the time we don’t know where we are at at all.  Big concerns get out what they call a balancing sheet every day yet, and we are lucky if we do it oncet a year already.  How long do you think it would take her to finish ’em up, Mawruss?”

The far-away look returned to Morris’ eyes as he replied.  “I am waiting for a telephone every minute, Abe,” he said.

Abe stared indignantly at his partner, then he took a cigar out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Morris.

“Go and sit down and smoke this, Mawruss,” he said.  “Leon Sammet gives it to me in the subway this morning, and if it’s anything like them souvenirs which he hands it out to his customers, it’ll make you forget your troubles, Mawruss.  The last time I smoked one, I couldn’t remember nothing for a week.”

Morris carefully cut off the end of Abe’s gift with a penknife, but when he struck a match the telephone bell rang sharply.  Immediately he threw the cigar and the lighted match to the floor and dashed wildly to the firm’s office.

“Do you got to burn the place up yet?” Abe cried, and after he had extinguished the match with his foot, he followed his partner to the office in time to view Morris’ coat tails disappearing into the elevator.  For two minutes he stood still and shook his head slowly.

“Miss Cohen,” he said at length, “get out them statements which I told it you yesterday, and so soon you got the drawing account finished, let me have it.  I don’t think Mr. Perlmutter will be back to-day, so you would have lots of time to do it in.”

It was almost two o’clock before Miss Cohen handed Abe the statement of the firm’s drawing account, and Abe thrust it into his breast pocket.

“I’m going out for a bite, Miss Cohen,” he said.  “If anybody wants me, I am over at Hammersmith’s and you could send Jake across for me.”

He sighed heavily as he raised his umbrella and plunged out into a heavy March downpour.  It had been raining steadily for about a week to the complete discouragement of garment buyers, and Hammersmith’s rear cafe sheltered a proportionately gloomy assemblage of cloak and suit manufacturers.  Abe glanced around him when he entered and selected a table at which sat Sol Klinger, who was scowling at a portion of Salisbury steak.