Without further parley Abe turned and left the show-room.

“Mawruss,” he called from the foot of the stairs, “come down here once.  I want to show you something.”

In the meantime Hymie pulled down the shades and turned on the electric lights.  Then he took a swatch of black velveteen from his pocket and arranged it over the sample-table with the two gems in its folds.

“Hymie Kotzen is inside the show-room,” Abe explained when Morris appeared in answer to his summons.

“Well, what have I got to do with Hymie Kotzen?” Morris demanded.

“Come inside and speak to him, Mawruss,” Abe rejoined.  “He won’t eat you.”

“Maybe you think I’m scared to turn him down, Abe?” Morris concluded as he led the way to the show-room.  “Well, I’ll show you different.”

“Hallo, Mawruss,” Hymie cried.  “What’s the good word?”

Morris grunted an inarticulate greeting.

“What you got all the shades down for, Abe?” he asked.

“Don’t touch ’em,” Hymie said.  “Just you have a look at this sample-table first.”

Hymie seized Morris by the arm and turned him around until he faced the velveteen.

“Ain’t them peaches, Mawruss?” he asked.

Morris stared at the diamonds, almost hypnotized by their brilliancy.

“Them stones belong to you, Mawruss,” Hymie went on, “if I don’t pay you inside of two weeks the thousand dollars what you’re going to lend me.”

“We ain’t going to lend you no thousand dollars, Hymie,” Morris said at last, “because we ain’t got it to lend.  We need it in our own business, Hymie, and, besides, you got the wrong idee.  We ain’t no pawnbrokers, Hymie; we are in the cloak and suit business.”

“Hymie knows it all about that, Mawruss,” Abe broke in, “and he shows he ain’t no crook, neither.  If he’s willing to trust you with them diamonds, Mawruss, we should be willing to trust him with a thousand dollars.  Ain’t it?”

“He could trust me with the diamonds, Abe, because I ain’t got no use for diamonds,” Morris replied.  “If anyone gives me diamonds that I should take care of it into the safe they go.  I ain’t a person what sticks diamonds all over myself, Abe, and I don’t buy no tchampanyer wine one day and come around trying to lend it from people a thousand dollars the next day, Abe.”

“It was my wife’s birthday,” Hymie explained; “and if I got to spend it my last cent, Mawruss, I always buy tchampanyer on my wife’s birthday.”

“All right, Hymie,” Morris retorted; “if you think it so much of your wife, lend it from her a thousand dollars.”

“Make an end, make an end,” Abe cried; “I hear it enough already.  Put them diamonds in the safe and we give Hymie a check for a thousand dollars.”

Morris shrugged his shoulders.

“All right, Abe,” he said.  “Do what you please, but remember what I tell it you now.  I don’t know nothing about diamonds and I don’t care nothing about diamonds, and if it should be that we got to keep it the diamonds I don’t want nothing to do with them.  All I want it is my share of the thousand dollars.”