“Don’t excite yourself, Abe,” Sol began.

“I ain’t excited, Sol,” Abe replied.  “I ain’t a bit excited.  All I would do is I will go back to the store and draw a check for fifty-two dollars.  I wouldn’t let that beat get ahead of me not for one cent, Sol.  If I would sit down with my eyes closed for five minutes, Sol, that loafer would do me for my shirt.  I must be on the job all the time, Sol, otherwise that feller would have me on the streets yet.”

For a quarter of an hour longer Abe reviled Morris, until Sol was moved to protest.

“If I thought that way about my partner, Abe,” he said, “I’d go right down and see Feldman and have a dissolution yet.”

“That’s what I will do, Sol,” Abe declared.  “Why should I tie myself up any longer with a cutthroat like that?  I tell you what we’ll do, Sol.  We’ll go over to the store and see what else Miss Cohen found it out.  I bet you he rings in a whole lot of items on me with the petty cash while I was away on the road.”

Together they left Hammersmith’s and repaired at once to Potash & Perlmutter’s place of business.  As they entered the show-room Miss Cohen emerged from her office with a sheet of paper in her hand.

“Mr. Potash,” she said, “when you were in Chicago last fall you drew on the firm for a hundred dollars, and by mistake I credited it to you on your expense account.  It ought to have been charged on your drawing account.  So that makes your total drawing account sixty-three hundred dollars.”

Abe stopped short and looked at Sol.

“What was that you said, Miss Cohen?” he asked.

“I said that I made a mistake in that statement, and you’re overdrawn on Mr. Perlmutter forty-eight dollars,” Miss Cohen concluded.

“Then hurry up quick, Miss Cohen,” Abe cried, “and draw a check in my personal check book on the Kosciusko Bank to Potash & Perlmutter for forty-eight dollars and see that it’s deposited the first thing to-morrow morning.”

He handed Sol a cigar.

“Yes, Sol,” he said, “if Mawruss would find it out that I am overdrawn on him forty-eight dollars, he would abuse me like a pickpocket.  That feller never gives me credit for being square at all, Sol.  I would be afraid for my life if he would get on to that forty-eight dollars.  Why, the very first thing you know, Sol, he would be going around telling everybody I was a crook and a cutthroat.  That’s the kind of feller Mawruss is, Sol.  I could treat him always like a gentleman, Sol, and if the smallest little thing happens to us, ‘sucker’ is the least what he calls me.”

At this juncture the green baize doors leading into the hall burst open and Morris himself leaped into the show-room.  His necktie was perched rakishly underneath his right ear, and his collar was of the moisture and consistency of a used wash rag.  His clothes were dripping, for he carried no umbrella, and his hair hung in damp strands over his forehead.  Nevertheless he was grinning broadly, as without a word he ran up to Abe and seized his hand.  For two minutes Morris shook it up and down and then he collapsed into the nearest chair.