"Take ten dollars and make an end," rejoined Klinger, tendering a bill.

"For ten dollars I could give you a fine piece cut glass, Mr. Klinger," Flachs insisted.

By way of answer Klinger tucked away the ten-dollar bill he had taken from his waistcoat pocket, and Flachs seized the coffee percolator with both hands.

"I'll wrap it up for you right away," he said, and then it was that Klinger recognized Morris, who had been standing unnoticed in the background.

"Hello, Perlmutter!" he said; "what are you doing here?"

"I guess I am doing the same what you are doing, Klinger," Morris replied stiffly. "I am buying for a customer a present. Ain't it?"

Klinger nodded.

"Honestly, Perlmutter," he said, "I never seen the like how things happen. No sooner you start to sell goods to a feller than somebody is engaged oder married in his family."

"He must be a pretty good customer the way you are blowing yourself," Morris commented.

"I bet yer!" Klinger said as he walked away; "and if you would be in our place you would do the same."

For five minutes Morris examined the cut glass, and when Flachs returned he had decided upon an olive dish of most intricate design. "That's a close buyer, that Mr. Klinger," Flachs observed.

"Not near so close as I am," Morris declared.

"Well, you wouldn't anyhow kick on paying twenty-five cents express, Mr. Perlmutter," Flachs said, "but that feller actually wants me to deliver the package for nothing."

"Why not?" Morris asked. "Don't everybody deliver packages free?"

"Not a pawnbroker's-sales store," Flachs replied; "and anyhow, Mr. Perlmutter, Leon Sammet this morning buys from me for thirty dollars silver to be sent to the same place on One Hundred and Eighteenth Street as that there perculater, and he didn't kick only a little that I am charging him fifty cents express."

"What!" Morris exclaimed. "Is Klinger sending that perculater up to One Hundred and Eighteenth Street too?"

"That's what I said," Flachs answered, and Morris replaced the cut-glass dish on the shelf.

"Was the name Gladstein?" he inquired, and Flachs nodded.

"Then in that case," Morris said savagely, "let me look at some sterling silver for about twenty-five dollars. If them suckers could stand it, so can I."

* * * * *

More than two days had elapsed before Abe had exhausted the topic of Mrs. Gladstein's ten-dollar engagement present. He discussed it satirically, profanely and earnestly, from the standpoint of business ethics, in such maddening reiterations that Morris could not help wondering how much longer Abe's criticism would have continued had he known that the cold-meat tray really cost twenty-five dollars.

"You are throwing away good money after bad, Mawruss," Abe said, renewing the subject after an interval of comparative calm, "because, so sure as you are standing there, we would never get our two hundred and fifty out of that feller Gurin."

"What has Mrs. Gladstein's present got to do with Gurin?" Morris asked. "If I told you once, Abe, in the last two days, I am telling you a dozen times, understand me, I am giving that there cold-meat tray to Mrs. Gladstein as a speculation, Abe. What difference does it make who she marries, Abe, Gurin oder Asimof, so long as we could land from her an order for five hundred dollars?"

"Yow! You would land from her an order for five hundred dollars!" Abe exclaimed.

"Well, if Sol Klinger could do it, why couldn't we?" Morris asked.

"What are you talking about Sol Klinger?" Abe demanded.

Thereupon Morris related to Abe the circumstances surrounding Sol Klinger's purchase of the coffee percolator, and when he concluded Abe nodded slowly.

"So that highwayman is butting in too," he commented. "How much did you say he is paying for that samovar, Mawruss?"

Morris closed his eyes as though he were making a conscientious effort to remember the exact amount.

"Thirty dollars," he announced at last.

"What!" Abe cried. "You stood there and let Sol Klinger buy for thirty dollars a present and we ourselves only spend ten? What for a piker are you anyway, Mawruss?"

"What do you mean, what for a piker am I?" Morris said indignantly. "You are talking me black in the face on account I am spending ten dollars and now you are kicking I didn't spend thirty."

"Did you tell me before that Sol Klinger buys a present?" Abe asked. "And furthermore, Mawruss, this wouldn't be the first time we are spending money to get business. Couldn't we afford to lay out thirty dollars if we want to?"

"But, Abe——" Morris began.

"But nothing!" Abe roared. "Why should you get all of a sudden so sparsam mit our money, Mawruss? You talk like we would be new beginners on East Broadway already."

"But, Abe——" Morris protested again.

"'S enough, Mawruss," Abe interrupted. "I heard enough from you already. Only one thing I got to tell you: if we lose a chance of getting some business from a lady which you could really say I know her well enough that it's a shame we ain't sold her nothing already even, don't blame me. That's all I got to say."

He walked away to the cutting room, while Morris sat down in the nearest chair, dazed to the point of temporary aphasia. For five minutes he sat still, endeavouring to trace the intricacies of a discussion that had put him so decisively in the wrong, and he was still pondering the matter when the elevator door opened and B. Gurin alighted.

"How do you do, Mr. Perlmutter?" Gurin cried.

Morris grunted inarticulately and made no attempt to take his visitor's proffered hand.

"Did you got any news for me?" Gurin asked.

Morris rose to his feet.

"Yes, I got some news for you," he said. "I got news for you that Mrs. Gladstein is engaged to be married to a feller by the name Asimof."

He looked absently at a sample rack upon which reposed the very newspaper that contained the advertisement.

"Here it is," he continued, as he seized the paper. "You could see for yourself."

He handed the advertisement to Gurin, who read it over unmoved.

"Well, I must tell you the honest truth, Mr. Perlmutter," he said. "I couldn't say I am sorry." And he smiled amiably.

As Morris gazed at the fashion-plate features and the fashion-plate apparel of his visitor, he entirely forgot his optimistic scheme of supplanting Asimof with Gurin and he grew suddenly livid with a fierce rage.

"You ain't, ain't you?" he bellowed. "Well, you ought to be, because so sure as you are standing there, comes Monday morning and we don't get a check from you, we would close you up sure, y'understand."

"Now, lookyhere, Mr. Perlmutter—" Gurin began, but the reaction set up by Morris's encounter with his partner had begun to have its effect and he seized Gurin by one padded shoulder.

"Out!" he roared. "Out of my place, you rotten, cheap dude, you!"

And two minutes later B. Gurin fled wildly down the stairs, the newspaper still clutched in his hand.

* * * * *

Although Leon Sammet had at first been actuated by motives of a somewhat sordid nature in his negotiation of Mrs. Gladstein's betrothal, his subsequent behaviour was tempered by the traditional hospitality of his race. As for his mother, Mrs. Leah Sammet, she entered upon the preparations for the reception with an ardour that could not have been exceeded had Mrs. Gladstein been her own daughter. Thus, when Sunday afternoon arrived, Mrs. Sammet's house on One Hundred and Eighteenth Street presented an appearance of unusual festivity. The long, narrow parlor had been liberally draped with smilax and sparingly decorated with ex-table-d'hote roses, until it resembled the mortuary chapel of a Mulberry Street undertaker; and this effect was, if anything, heightened by four dozen camp-chairs that had been procured from the sexton of Mrs. Sammet's place of worship.

A fine odour of cooking ascended from the basement kitchen, and when Jacob Asimof had entered the front door at the behest of a coloured man with white gloves he sniffed the fragrant atmosphere of the lobby like a coon dog at the base of a hollow tree.

"Am I the first here?" he asked Barney Sammet, the junior partner of Sammet Brothers, who had been detailed by his elder brother to receive the arriving guests, with strict injunction to keep an eye on the cigars.

Barney nodded gloomily.

"And ain't Mrs. Gladstein—I mean Sonia—come yet?" Jacob inquired.

"We just now got a telephone from her, the train from Bridgetown is late and she would be here in half an hour," Barney replied.

"That's a fine lookout," Asimof commented. "I bet yer by that time we would got a big crowd here."

The words were prophetic, for the shuffling of many feet on the front stoop preluded the arrival of Sol Klinger, Mrs. Klinger, Moe Klein and Mrs. Klein, who were immediately succeeded by the firm of Kleiman & Elenbogen, H. Rashkin, the coat-pad manufacturer, and Marks Pasinsky.

It must be conceded that Leon Sammet comported himself in a highly creditable manner, and he greeted his guests with a cordiality that embraced competitor and customer in one impartial, comprehensive smile.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Klinger?" he exclaimed, and then he turned to Mrs. Leah Sammet, who stood beside him. "Mommer," he said, "I want you to know Mr. Klinger. Him and me has been competitors for twenty years already."

Mrs. Sammet nodded and smiled.

"For my part twenty years longer," she murmured, as she grasped Sol's hand.

"At a time like this, Mrs. Sammet," Sol rejoined, "it don't make no difference to me if a man is ever so much a competitor; what I claim is, let a sleeping dawg alone."

Mrs. Sammet indorsed the sentiment with another smile, and Sol with his retinue passed on into the back parlour for the purpose of inspecting the presents. In the meantime other guests had preceded them, and among them was a man whose bearing and raiment proclaimed the creature of fashion. Not only were his trousers of the latest narrow design, but they were of sufficient modish brevity half to conceal and half to reveal a pair of gossamer silk socks, which in their turn were incased by patent-leather, low-cut shoes. The latter exhibited the square knobbiness that only fashion artists can impart to the footgear of their models, while the broad laces that held them by the insecure hold of two eyelets were knotted in a bow that might have been appended to the collar of Mr. Paderewski himself.

"Ain't this Mr. Gurin?" Sol Klinger asked, and the creature of fashion nodded.

"You're a friend of the Kahlo, ain't it?" Klinger commented, employing the vernacular equivalent for the English word "bride."

"In a way," Gurin said evasively; "aber the Khosan I don't know at all."

Thus did Gurin imply that he was not acquainted with the future bridegroom, and Klinger volunteered the information that Asimof ran a dry-goods store in Dotyville, Pennsylvania.

"I sold him goods for years," he added, "and I guess I would continue to do so, even if that Ganef Sammet would make twenty engagement parties for 'em. Did you see the samovar I gave 'em?"

He pointed proudly to a silver-plated object, and Gurin glanced at it scornfully.

"Potash & Perlmutter gives 'em solid silver," he commented—"a wide dish."

"Sure I know," Klinger said, "thin like paper."

"Aber sterling," Gurin insisted, and Klinger made a telling diversion.

"I suppose you sent 'em something sterling also," he said.

"Me?" Gurin exclaimed. "Why should I buy presents? I am a retailer myself, Mr. Klinger, so I sent 'em some flowers."

"I don't see 'em nowhere," Sol retorted.

"They're over there," B. Gurin said, making a sweeping gesture in the general direction of the mantelpiece, and as he did so a bass voice sounded at his elbow.

"Put out my eye why don't you?" cried Abe Potash, and then he recognized his assailant.

"Say, what are you doing here?" he demanded.

B. Gurin looked coldly at his creditor and shrugged his shoulders.

"I got just so much right to be here as you," he said, "and that partner of yours too."

He hurled this defiance at Morris, who had entered the room on Abe's heels; but the retort passed unnoticed so far as Morris was concerned, since he was absorbed in the contemplation of the presents.

"Well, Klinger," he said, "you are making Mrs. Gladstein a pretty fine present, ain't it?"

Klinger scowled.

"Mrs. Gladstein I ain't bothering my head about at all," he replied. "But when a cut-throat like Sammet makes out a scheme to steal away from me an old customer like Asimof I got to protect myself."

Morris whistled expressively.

"So you are making the present to Asimof?" he commented.

"Sure, I am," Sol answered. "As for Mrs. Gladstein, she got presents enough from me. The first time she was married I am sending money to the old country to my father he should make her a present on account Mrs. Gladstein's father is my father's a third cousin, understand me. And when she marries Gladstein, y'understand, I give her both an engagement and a wedding present both. And do you think that sucker, olav hasholom, ever buys from me a dollar's worth goods? Oser a Stueck."

"And you say Mrs. Gladstein was twicet married?" Morris asked.

"Ain't I just telling you so?" Sol replied.

"What was her first husband's name?" Morris asked; but the question remained unanswered, for at that very moment a confusion of noises in the front parlour signalled the arrival of the bride.

Morris and Sol followed the other guests from the rear parlour, and then it was that Morris discerned his partner's appreciative description of Mrs. Gladstein's claim to be in no way exaggerated. She was arrayed in a black silk dress of a design well calculated to display her graceful figure, while her oval face was shaded by a black picture hat, beneath which her large dark eyes glowed and flashed by turns. Moreover, her complexion was all cream and roses, and when she smiled two rows of even white teeth were exposed between a pair of tantalizing red lips.

Morris commenced to perspire with embarrassment as he remembered how he had planned to negotiate a match for this glorious creature—a task that only a very prince of marriage brokers might have essayed. He turned away; but as his eye rested on B. Gurin, who still lingered over the presents, he was obliged to admit that he had chosen a fitting candidate, and he even felt mollified toward his delinquent customer as he reflected on Gurin's lost opportunity.

"Gurin," he said, "ain't you going to congradulate the Kahlo?"

"I didn't know she was here at all," Gurin said sadly. The truth was that Gurin's presence at the reception that afternoon was not inspired by curiosity concerning either Mrs. Gladstein or Asimof. Business was undeniably bad with him, and he was making an earnest effort to keep his financial head above water. Thus he limited his personal expenses to the preservation of his wardrobe, and he had cut down his cost of living to a degree that permitted only a very low, lunch-wagon diet. He saw in Mrs. Sammet's hospitality the prospect of a meal, and although he was by no means courageous, his appetite spurred him on to brave his creditors' wrath.

"I'll take a look at her," he murmured apologetically, and he began to elbow his way through the group that surrounded the engaged couple. Morris patted him on the shoulder as he passed and was about to return to the back parlour when a shriek came from the centre of the congratulatory throng.

"Boris!" cried a female voice with a note of hysteria in its shrill tones.

"Sonia!" B. Gurin exclaimed, and the next moment he clasped Mrs. Gladstein in his arms.

* * * * *

"You was asking me the name of Mrs. Gladstein's first husband," said Sol Klinger to Morris Perlmutter, as they descended the stoop together half an hour later. "It was Aaron Lutsky. He died two years after they was married. I knew his family well in the old country—her's too, Perlmutter. Her father was a feller by the name Polanya, and to-day yet he runs a big flour mill in Koroleshtchevitzi."

"So I understand," Morris said; "but what's that you got there under your coat?"

He referred to a huge bulge on the right side of Sol Klinger's Prince Albert coat, which Sol was supporting with both hands.

"That's my present," Sol said, as if surprised at the question, "and if Marcus Flachs wouldn't give me my money back, understand me, I could anyhow exchange it for something useful."

"It don't make no difference, Mawruss," Abe said, as they sat in their showroom two months later. "The feller should got to pay us that two hundred and fifty dollars."

"But we would get lots of business out of them now that they are married, Abe," Morris protested.

"Sure, I know, Mawruss, and they got lots of presents out of us too, Mawruss," Abe said. "Counting the engagement and the wedding present, Mawruss, and my Rosie's new dress, and the pants which you bought it to go with your tuxedo, understand me—first and last we must be out a hundred and fifty dollars."

Morris nodded. He recognized that an opportunity was here presented to correct Abe's figures by the addition of fifteen dollars to the price of the engagement present, but he deemed it more prudent to await the arrival of Gurin's first order. In point of fact, Morris had begun to examine the mails with some anxiety for a letter postmarked Bridgetown. More than two weeks had elapsed since Gurin's wedding, and, making due allowances for honeymooning, it seemed to Morris that from an inspection of Mrs. Gladstein's stock, made by him on a congratulatory visit to Bridgetown, there was immediate need for replenishment.

"I don't understand why we don't hear from them people at all," he said.

"Give 'em a show, Mawruss. Give 'em a show," Abe replied. "A man only gets married, for the first time, once."

Morris shrugged.

"For my part, Abe, I ain't in no hurry," he said. "If you could see the way Leon Sammet gives me a look this morning when I seen him on the subway y'understand, it would be worth to you a hundred and fifty dollars. Sol Klinger is feeling sore too, Abe. I seen him in Hammersmith's yesterday, and he says to me Flachs wouldn't exchange that samovar arrangement which he bought it, so he took it home with him, and he ain't drunk nothing but coffee in two months."

"I bet yer," Abe commented; "and he also ain't got an order from Asimof in two months. The feller is heartbroken, Mawruss. He even had made arrangements to sell his store in Dotyville and move over to Bridgetown, y'understand, and when he called the deal off the purchaser sues him for breach of contract yet."

"But why should he get mad at Klinger?" Morris asked. "Klinger didn't do him nothing."

"Maybe you don't think so, Mawruss, but Asimof figures differencely; because he told me this morning, that after the engagement is off, understand me, Mrs. Gladstein and him makes a division of the presents. Asimof takes what was sent by the concerns which is selling him goods, and Mrs. Gladstein takes the rest, all excepting a present they got from Marks Pasinsky.

"Pasinsky used to sell 'em both goods, y'understand; but fortunately, Mawruss, he sends 'em a dozen coffee spoons, so Asimof takes six and Mrs. Gladstein takes six."

"It's a good thing Pasinsky didn't send 'em a single piece of cut glass," Morris said thoughtfully.

"It wouldn't make no difference to Asimof," Abe said. "He would of allowed Mrs. Gladstein half cost price, give or take. He's a pretty square feller, Asimof is, Mawruss, and he said he would give a look in here this afternoon. We needn't be afraid from him, Mawruss. He's A number one up to two hundred and fifty dollars, thirty days net."

Morris nodded again and walked slowly toward the cutting room, while his partner sat down to read the trade news in the Daily Cloak and Suit Record. Morris had hardly reached the doorway, however, when a strident shout caused him to retrace his steps in a hurry.

"What's the matter now?" he exclaimed; but Abe was incapable of articulate speech. Instead he held out the paper and made noises appropriate to an apopletic seizure, which Morris construed as a request to look at something of more than ordinary interest.

"Where, where?" he demanded, and Abe stuck a trembling forefinger through the printed page. As nearly as the torn edges of the paper would permit, Morris read the following paragraph:

BRIDGETOWN, PA.—D. GLADSTEIN'S STORE CLOSED. The stock and fixtures of the general store conducted here by D. Gladstein, deceased, were closed out last week, and his widow, who recently married B. Gurin, sailed from New York with her husband yesterday for Hamburg. It is understood that they intend to reside permanently in Europe.

While Morris perused the item Abe gradually recovered his composure, and when his partner at last put down the paper Abe was able to smile the slow, ghostly smile of a man who has called four deuces with an ace full.

"Well, Mawruss," he said resignedly, "a feller must expect the worst when he's got an optician for a partner."



[Transcriber's Note:

Punctuation has been regularized, except for inconsistent hyphenation, which has been retained as in the original.

The following typographic errors have been corrected:

Page 109 "woud" changed to "would" Page 223 "cired" changed to "cried" Page 234 "it it" changed to "it is" Page 352 "successs" changed to "success"

The following were each used once and were not changed:

jimminy/jiminy defence/defense]

THE END