“Say, my friends,” Frank Walsh cried, poking his head in the door, “far from me to be buttin’ in, but whenever you’re ready for lunch just let me know.”

Mr. Small jumped to his feet.  “I’ll let you know,” he said—­“I’ll let you know right now.  Half an hour since already I told Mr. Klinger I would make up my mind this afternoon about giving him the order for them goods what Mr. Burke picked out.  Well, you go back and tell him I made up my mind already, sooner than I expected.  I ain’t going to give him the order at all.”

Walsh’s red face grew purple.  At first he gurgled incoherently, but finally recovered sufficiently to enunciate; and for ten minutes he denounced Mr. Small and Mr. Burke, their conduct and antecedents.  It was a splendid exhibition of profane invective, and when he concluded he was almost breathless.

“Yah!” he jeered, “five-dollar tickets for a prize-fight for the likes of youse!”

He fixed Morris and Mr. Burke with a final glare.

“Pearls before swine!” he bellowed, and banged the show-room door behind him.

Mr. Burke looked at Morris.  “That’s a lowlife for you,” he said.  “A respectable concern should have a salesman like him!  Ain’t it a shame and a disgrace?”

Morris nodded.

“He takes me to a place where nothing but loafers is,” Mr. Burke continued, “and for two hours I got to sit and hear him and his friend there, that big feller—­I guess you seen him, Mr. Perlmutter—­he told me he keeps a beer saloon—­another lowlife—­for two hours I got to listen to them loafers cussing together, and then he gets mad that I don’t enjoy myself yet.”

Mr. Small shrugged his shoulders.

“Let’s forget all about it,” he said.  “Come, Abe, I want to look over your line, and you and me will do business right away.”

Abe and Morris spent the next two hours displaying their line, while Mr. Small and Mr. Burke selected hundred lots of every style.  Finally, Abe and Mr. Small retired to the office to fill out the order, leaving Morris to replace the samples.  He worked with a will and whistled a cheerful melody by way of accompaniment.

“Mister Perlmutter,” James Burke interrupted, “that tune what you are whistling it, ain’t that the drinking song from Travvy-ater already?”

Morris ceased his whistling.  “That’s right,” he replied.

“I thought it was,” Mr. Burke said.  “I was going to see that opera last Saturday night if that lowlife Walsh wouldn’t have took me to the prize-fight.”

He paused and helped himself to a fresh cigar from the “gilt-edged” box.

“For anybody else but a loafer,” he concluded, “prize-fighting is nix.  Opera, Mr. Perlmutter, that’s an amusement for a gentleman.”

Morris nodded a vigorous acquiescence.  He had nearly concluded his task when Abe and his new-found brother-in-law returned.

“Well, gentlemen,” Mr. Small announced, “we figured it up and it comes to twenty-five hundred dollars.  That ain’t bad for a starter.”