“Well,” Abe said, “I did write you he wasn’t no good, and he wasn’t no good, neither.  Ain’t he just made it a failure?”

Mr. Hahn grew once more infuriated.

“A failure!” he yelled.  “I should say he did make a failure. What a failure he made!  Fool!  Donkey!  The man got away with a hundred thousand dollars and is living like a prince in the old country.  And poor Gussie, she loved him, too!  She cries night and day.”

He stopped to wipe a sympathetic tear.

“She cries pretty easy,” Abe said.  “She cried when we fired Mannie Gubin, too.”

Hahn bristled again.

“You insult me.  What?” he cried.  “You try to get funny with me.  Hey?  All right.  I fix you.  So far what I can help it, never no more do you sell me or Max or anybody what is friends of ours a button.  Not a button!  Y’understand?”

He wheeled about and the next moment the store door banged with cannon-like percussion.  Morris came from behind a rack of raincoats and tiptoed toward Abe.

“Well, Abe,” he said, “you put your foot in it that time.”

Abe mopped the perspiration from his brow and bit the end off a cigar.

“We done business before we had Philip Hahn for a customer, Mawruss,” he said, “and I guess we’ll do it again.  Ain’t it?”

* * * * *

Six months later Abe was scanning the columns of the Daily Cloak and Suit Record while Morris examined the morning mail.

“Yes, Mawruss,” he said at length.  “Some people get only what they deserve.  I always said it, some day Philip Hahn will be sorry he treated us the way he did.  I bet yer he’s sorry now.”

“So far what I hear, Abe,” Morris replied, “he ain’t told us nor nobody else that he’s sorry.  In fact, I seen him coming out of Sammet Brothers’ yesterday, and he looked at me like he would treat us worser already, if he could.  What makes you think he’s sorry, Abe?”

“Well,” Abe went on, “if he ain’t sorry he ought to be.”

He handed the Daily Cloak and Suit Record to Morris and indicated the New Business column with his thumb.

“Rochester, N. Y.,” it read.  “Philip Hahn, doing business here as the Flower City Credit Outfitting Company, announces that he has taken into partnership Emanuel Gubin, who recently married Mr. Hahn’s niece.  The business will be conducted under the old firm style.”

Morris handed back the paper with a smile.

“I seen Leon Sammet on the subway this morning and he told me all about it,” he commented.  “He says Gubin eloped with her.”

Abe shook his head.

“You got it wrong, Mawruss.  You must be mistaken,” he concluded. “She eloped with Gubin.”

CHAPTER VIII

“You carry a fine stock, Mr. Sheitlis,” Abe Potash exclaimed as he glanced around the well-filled shelves of the Suffolk Credit Outfitting Company.