“Sure he was made it arrested,” Ralph said.  “But he fixed it up all right at the station-house, and the sergeant lets him out.  So he goes up to the Heatherbloom Inn because when he went right back to the hotel to see after that Miss Taylor the carriage agent tells him a feller chases him up in an oitermobile to the Heatherbloom Inn.  But when Uncle Max gets up there you look like you was having such a good time already he hates to interrupt you, so he goes back to the store again.”

Morris puffed violently at his cigar.

“That’s a fine piece of work,” he said, “that Max Tuchman is.”

Ralph nodded.

“Sure he is,” he replied.  “Uncle Max is an up-to-date feller.”

CHAPTER XI

“The trouble is with us, Mawruss,” Abe Potash declared one afternoon in September, “that we ain’t in an up-to-date neighborhood.  We should get it a loft in one of them buildings up in Seventeenth, Eighteenth or Nineteenth Street, Mawruss.  All the trade is up in that neighborhood.”

“I ain’t got such a good head for figures like you got it, Abe,” Morris Perlmutter replied, “and so I am content we should stay where we are.  We done it always a fair business here, Abe.  Ain’t it?”

“Sure, I know,” Abe went on, “but the way it is with out-of-town buyers, Mawruss, they goes where the crowd is, and they ain’t going to be bothered to come way downtown for us, Mawruss.”

“Well, how about Klinger & Klein, Lapidus & Elenbogen, and all them people, Abe?” Morris asked.  “Ain’t them out-of-town buyers going to buy goods off of them neither?”

“Klinger & Klein already hire it a fine loft on Nineteenth Street,” Abe interposed.

“Well, Abe,” Morris rejoined, “Klinger & Klein, like a whole lot of people what I know, acts like monkeys, Abe.  They see somebody doing something and they got to do it too.”

“If we could do the business what Klinger & Klein done it, Mawruss, I am willing I should act like a monkey.”

“Another thing, Abe,” Morris went on, “Klinger & Klein sends their work out by contractors.  We got it operators and machines, Abe, and you can’t have a show-room, cutting-room and machines all in one loft.  Ain’t it?”

“Well, then we get it two lofts, Mawruss, and then we could put our workrooms upstairs and our show-room and offices downstairs.”

“And double our expenses, too, Abe,” Morris added.  “No, Abe, I don’t want to work for no landlord all my life.”

“But I seen Marks Henochstein yesterday, Mawruss, and he told it me Klinger & Klein ain’t paying half the rent what they pay down here.  So, if we could get it two floors we wouldn’t increase our expenses, Mawruss, and could do it maybe twicet the business.”

“Marks Henochstein is a real-estater, Abe,” Morris replied, “and when a real-estater tells you something, you got to make allowances fifty per cent. for facts.”