“That ain’t all the stock I carry,” Mr. Sheitlis, the proprietor, exclaimed.  “I got also another stock which I am anxious to dispose of it, Mr. Potash, and you could help me out, maybe.”

Abe smiled with such forced amiability that his mustache was completely engulfed between his nose and his lower lip.

“I ain’t buying no cloaks, Mr. Sheitlis,” he said.  “I’m selling ’em.”

“Not a stock from cloaks, Mr. Potash,” Mr. Sheitlis explained; “but a stock from gold and silver.”

“I ain’t in the jewelry business, neither,” Abe said.

“That ain’t the stock what I mean,” Mr. Sheitlis cried.  “Wait a bit and I’ll show you.”

He went to the safe in his private office and returned with a crisp parchment-paper certificate bearing in gilt characters the legend, Texas-Nevada Gold and Silver Mining Corporation.

“This is what I mean it,” he said; “stock from stock exchanges.  I paid one dollar a share for this hundred shares.”

Abe took the certificate and gazed at it earnestly with unseeing eyes.  Mr. Sheitlis had just purchased a liberal order of cloaks and suits from Potash & Perlmutter, and it was, therefore, a difficult matter for Abe to turn down this stock proposition without offending a good customer.

“Well, Mr. Sheitlis,” he commenced, “me and Mawruss Perlmutter we do business under a copartnership agreement, and it says we ain’t supposed to buy no stocks from stock exchanges, and——­”

“I ain’t asking you to buy it,” Mr. Sheitlis broke in.  “I only want you to do me something for a favor.  You belong in New York where all them stock brokers is, so I want you should be so kind and take this here stock to one of them stock brokers and see what I can get for it.  Maybe I could get a profit for it, and then, of course, I should pay you something for your trouble.”

“Pay me something!” Abe exclaimed in accents of relief.  “Why, Mr. Sheitlis, what an idea!  Me and Mawruss would be only too glad, Mr. Sheitlis, to try and sell it for you, and the more we get it for the stock the gladder we would be for your sake.  I wouldn’t take a penny for selling it if you should make a million out of it.”

“A million I won’t make it,” Mr. Sheitlis replied, dismissing the subject.  “I’ll be satisfied if I get ten dollars for it.”

He walked toward the front door of his store with Abe.

“What is the indications for spring business in the wholesale trade, Mr. Potash,” he asked blandly.

Abe shook his head.

“It should be good, maybe,” he replied; “only, you can’t tell nothing about it.  Silks is the trouble.”

“Silks?” Mr. Sheitlis rejoined.  “Why, silks makes goods sell high, Mr. Potash.  Ain’t it?  Certainly, I admit it you got to pay more for silk piece goods as for cotton piece goods, but you take the same per cent. profit on the price of the silk as on the price of the cotton, and so you make more in the end.  Ain’t it?”