“Why, what’s the matter with our credit policy?” Morris asked.

“Nothing,” Mr. Lowenstein replied.  “Only a merchant like me, what wants to enlarge his business, needs a little better terms than thirty days.  Ain’t it?  I’m improving my departments all the time, and I got to buy more fixtures, lay in a better stock and even build a new wing to my store building.  All this costs money, Mr. Perlmutter, as you know, and contractors must be paid strictly for cash.  Under the circumstances, I need ready money, and, naturally, the house what gives me the most generous credit gets my biggest order.”

“Excuse me for a moment,” Morris broke in, “I think I hear the telephone.”

He walked to the rear of the store, where the telephone bell had been trilling impatiently.

“Hello,” he said, taking the receiver off the hook.

“Hello,” said a voice from the other end of the line.  “Is this Potash & Perlmutter?”

“It is,” said Morris.

“Well, this is Garfunkel & Levy,” the voice went on.  “We understand Mr. Lowenstein, of Galveston, is in your store.  Will you please and call him to the ’phone for a minute?”

“This ain’t no public pay station,” Morris cried.  “And besides, Mr. Lowenstein just left here.”

He banged the receiver onto the hook and returned at once to the front of the store.

“Now, Mr. Lowenstein,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

And two hours later Mr. Lowenstein left the store with the duplicate of a twenty-four-hundred-dollar order in his pocket, deliveries to commence within five days; terms, ninety days net.

“Well, Abe,” Morris said the next day as his partner, Abe Potash, entered the show-room, “how are you feeling to-day?”

“Mean, Mawruss,” Abe replied.  “I feel mean.  The doctor says I need a rest.  He says I got to go away to the country or I will maybe break down.”

“Is that so?” said Morris, deeply concerned.  “Well, then, you’d better go right away, before you get real serious sick.  Why not fix it so you can go away to-morrow yet?”

“To-morrow!” Abe exclaimed.  “It don’t go so quick as all that, Mawruss.  You can’t believe everything the doctors tell you.  I ain’t exactly dead yet, Mawruss.  I’m like the feller what everybody says is going to fail, Mawruss.  They give him till after Christmas to bust up, and then he does a fine holiday trade, and the first thing you know, Mawruss, he’s buying real estate.  No, Mawruss, I feel pretty mean, I admit, but I think a good two-thousand-dollar order would put me all right again, and so long as we wouldn’t have no more trouble with designers, Mawruss, I guess I would stay right too.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” said Morris, beaming all over, “I guess I can fix you up.  Siegmund Lowenstein, of Galveston, was in here yesterday, and I sold him a twenty-four-hundred-dollar order, including them forty-twenty-two’s, and you know as well as I do, Abe, them forty-twenty-two’s is stickers.  We got ’em in stock now over two months, ever since Abe Magnus, of Nashville, turned ’em back on us.”