“One year!” Abe cried.  “Why, Louis, that ain’t no way to talk.  In one year you’d just about get well enough acquainted with our trade—­of course, I’m only talking, y’understand—­to cop it out for some other house what would pay you a couple of hundred more.  No, Louis, I think it ought to be for five years.”

“Of course, if you think I’m the kind what takes a job to cop out the firm’s trade, Abe,” Louis commenced, “why——­”

“I’m only saying for the sake of argument,” Abe hastened to explain.  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Louis:  I’ll make it two years, and at the end of that time if you want to quit you can do it; only, you should agree not to work as salesman for no other house for the space of one year afterward or you can go on working for us for one year afterward.  How’s that?”

“I think that’s eminently fair,” Mr. Feldman broke in hurriedly.  “You can’t refuse those terms, Mr. Mintz.  Mr. Potash will sign for his partner, I apprehend, and then Mr. Perlmutter will be bound under the principle of qui fecit per alium fecit per se.”

No one could stand up against such a flood of Latin, and Louis nodded.

“All right,” he said.  “Let her go that way.”

Mr. Feldman immediately rang for a stenographer.

“Come back to-morrow at four o’clock,” he said.  “I shall send a clerk with the deed to be signed by Mrs. Potash and Mrs. Perlmutter to-night.”

The next afternoon, at half an hour after the appointed time, the contract was executed and the deed delivered to Louis Mintz, and on the first of the following month Louis entered upon his new employment.

Louis’ first season with his new employers was fraught with good results for Potash & Perlmutter, who reaped large profits from Louis’ salesmanship; but for Louis it had been somewhat disappointing.

“I never see nothing like it,” he complained to Abe.  “That tenement house is like a summer hotel—­people coming and going all the time; and every time a tenant moves yet I got to pay for painting and repapering the rooms.  You certainly stuck me good on that house.”

“Stuck you!” Abe cried.  “We didn’t stuck you, Louis.  We just give you the house as a bonus.  If it don’t rent well, Louis, you ought to sell it.”

“Don’t I know I ought to sell it?” Louis cried; “but who’s going to buy it?  Real-estater after real-estater comes to look at it, and it all amounts to nix.  They wouldn’t take the house for the mortgages.”

For nearly a year and a half Louis and Abe repeated this conversation every time Louis came back from the road, and on the days when Louis paid interest on mortgages and premiums on fire insurance he grew positively tearful.

“Why don’t you pay me what I am short from paying carrying charges on that property?” Louis asked one day.  “And I’ll give you the house back.”

Abe laughed.

“You should make that proposition to the feller what sold us the house,” Abe said jocularly.