“Tchampanyer he ain’t drinking it to-day, Mawruss, I bet yer,” Abe replied.  “He wants to lend it from us a thousand dollars.”

Morris laughed raucously.

“What a chance!” he said.

“Till the first of the month, Mawruss,” Abe continued, “and I thought maybe we would let him have it.”

Morris ceased laughing and glared at Abe.

“Tchampanyer you must have been drinking it, Abe,” he commented.

“Why shouldn’t we let him have it, Mawruss?” Abe demanded.  “Hymie’s a good feller, Mawruss, and a smart business man, too.”

“Is he?” Morris yelled.  “Well, he ain’t smart enough to keep out of failures like Barney Fischman’s and Cohen & Schondorf’s, Abe, but he’s too smart to lend it us a thousand dollars, supposing we was short for a couple of days.  No, Abe, I heard it enough about Hymie Kotzen already.  I wouldn’t positively not lend him nothing, Abe, and that’s flat.”

To end the discussion effectually he went to the cutting-room upstairs and remained there when Hymie rang up.

“It ain’t no use, Hymie,” Abe said.  “Mawruss wouldn’t think of it.  We’re short ourselves.  You’ve no idee what trouble we got it with some of our collections.”

“But, Abe,” Hymie protested, “I got to have the money.  I promised Feder I would give it him this afternoon.”

Abe remained silent.

“I tell you what I’ll do, Abe,” Hymie insisted; “I’ll come around and see you.”

“It won’t be no use, Hymie,” Abe said, but Central was his only auditor, for Hymie had hung up the receiver.  Indeed, Abe had hardly returned to the show-room before Hymie entered the store door.

“Where’s Mawruss?” he asked.

“Up in the cutting-room,” Abe replied.

“Good!” Hymie cried.  “Now look’y here, Abe, I got a proposition to make it to you.”

He tugged at the diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand and laid it on a sample-table.  Then from his shirt-bosom he unscrewed a miniature locomotive headlight, which he deposited beside the ring.

“See them stones, Abe?” he continued.  “They costed it me one thousand three hundred dollars during the panic already, and to-day I wouldn’t take two thousand for ’em.  Now, Abe, you sit right down and write me out a check for a thousand dollars, and so help me I should never stir out of this here office, Abe, if I ain’t on the spot with a thousand dollars in hand two weeks from to-day, Abe, you can keep them stones, settings and all.”

Abe’s eyes fairly bulged out of his head as he looked at the blazing diamonds.

“But, Hymie,” he exclaimed, “I don’t want your diamonds.  If I had it the money myself, Hymie, believe me, you are welcome to it like you was my own brother.”

“I know all about that, Abe,” Hymie replied, “but you ain’t Mawruss, and if you got such a regard for me what you claim you have, Abe, go upstairs and ask Mawruss Perlmutter will he do it me the favor and let me have that thousand dollars with the stones as security.”