In this instance, however, full fifty-nine days elapsed without word from M. Garfunkel, and on the morning of the sixtieth day Abe entered the store bearing every appearance of anxiety.

“Well, Abe,” Morris cried, “what’s the matter now?  You look like you was worried.”

“I bet yer I’m worried, Mawruss,” Abe replied.

“Well, what’s the use of worrying?” he rejoined.  “M.  Garfunkel’s account ain’t due till to-day.”

“Always M. Garfunkel!” Abe cried.  “M.  Garfunkel don’t worry me much, Mawruss.  I’d like to see a check from him, too, Mawruss, but I ain’t wasting no time on him.  My Rosie is sick.”

“Sick!” Morris exclaimed.  “That’s too bad, Abe.  What seems to be the trouble?”

“She got the rheumatism in her shoulder,” Abe replied, “and she tries to get a girl by intelligent offices to help her out, but it ain’t no use.  It breaks her all up to get a girl, Mawruss.  Fifteen years already she cooks herself and washes herself, and now she’s got to get a girl, Mawruss, but she can’t get one.”

Morris clucked sympathetically.

“Maybe that girl of yours, Mawruss,” Abe went on as though making an innocent suggestion, “what we sell the forty-twenty-two to, maybe she got a sister or a cousin maybe, what wants a job, Mawruss.”

“I’ll telephone my Minnie right away,” Morris said, and as he turned to do so M. Garfunkel entered.  Abe and Morris rushed forward to greet him.  Each seized a hand and, patting him on the back, escorted him to the show-room.

“First thing,” M. Garfunkel said, “here is a check for the current bill.”

“No hurry,” Abe and Morris exclaimed, with what the musical critics call splendid attack.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” M. Garfunkel went on, “I want to give you another order.  Only thing is, Mawruss, you know as well as I do that in the installment cloak and suit business a feller needs a lot of capital.  Ain’t it?”

Morris nodded.

“And if he buys goods only for cash or thirty or sixty days, Abe,” M. Garfunkel continued, “he sometimes gets pretty cramped for money, because his own customers takes a long time to pay up.  Ain’t it?”

Abe nodded, too.

“Well, then,” M. Garfunkel concluded, “I’ll give you boys a fine order, but this time it’s got to be ninety days.”

Abe puffed hard on his cigar, and Morris loosened his collar, which had become suddenly tight.

“I always paid prompt my bills.  Ain’t it?” M. Garfunkel asked.

“Sure, Mr. Garfunkel,” Abe replied. “That you did do it.  But ninety days is three months, and ourselves we got to pay our bills in thirty days.”

“However,” Morris broke in, “that is neither there nor here.  A good customer is a good customer, Abe, and so I’m agreeable.”

This put the proposition squarely up to Abe, and he found it a difficult matter to refuse credit to a customer whose check for two thousand dollars was even then reposing in Abe’s waistcoat pocket.