"Max Fried, of the A La Mode Store, was in here a few minutes since, Mawruss," said Abe Potash, to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, after the latter had returned from lunch one busy August day, "and bought a couple of hundred of them long Trouvilles. He also wanted something to ask it of us as a favor, Mawruss."

"Sixty days is long enough, Abe," said Morris, on the principle of "once bitten, twice shy." "For a man what runs a little store like the A La Mode on Main Street, Buffalo, Abe, Max don't buy too few goods, neither. Ain't it?"

"Don't jump always for conclusions, Mawruss," Abe broke in. "This ain't no credit matter what he asks it of us. His wife got a sister what they wanted to make from her a teacher, Mawruss, but she ain't got the head. So, Max thinks we could maybe use her for a model. Her name is MissKreitmann and she's a perfect thirty-six, Max says, only a little fat."

"And then, when she tries on a garment for a customer," Morris rejoined, "the customer goes around telling everybody that we cut our stuff too skimpy. Ain't it? No, Abe, we got along so far good with the models what we got, and I guess we can keep it up. Besides, if Max is so anxious to get her a job, why don't he take her on himself, Abe?"

"Because she lives here in New York with her mother," Abe explained; "and what chance has a girl got in Buffalo, anyway? That's what Max says, and he also told it me that she got a very fine personality, and if we think it over maybe he gives us an introduction to Philip Hahn, of the Flower City Credit Outfitting Company. That's a million-dollar concern, Mawruss. I bet yer they're rated J to K, first credit, and Philip Hahn's wife is MissKreitmann's mother's sister. Leon Sammet will go crazy if he hears that we sell them people."

"That's all right, Abe," said Morris. "We ain't doing business to spite our competitors; we're doing it to please our customers so that they'll buy goods from us and maybe they'll go crazy, too, when they see her face, Abe."

"Max Fried says she is a good-looker. Nothing extraordinary, y'understand, but good, snappy stuff and up to date."

"You talk like she was a garment, Abe," said Morris.

"Well, you wouldn't buy no garment, Mawruss, just because some one told you it was good. Would you? So, Max says he would bring her around this afternoon, and if we liked her Hahn would stop in and see us later in the day. He says Hahn picks out never less than a couple of hundred of one style, and also Hahn is a liberal buyer, Mawruss."

"Of course, Abe," Morris commenced, "if we're doing this to oblige Philip Hahn——"

"We're doing it to oblige Philip Hahn and Max Fried both, Mawruss," Abe broke in. "Max says he ain't got a minute's peace since MissKreitmann is old enough to get married."

"So!" Morris cried. "A matrimonial agency we're running, Abe. Is that the idea?"

"The idea is that she should have the opportunity of meeting by us a business man, Mawruss, what can give her a good home and a good living, too. Max says he is pretty near broke, buying transportation from Buffalo to New York, Mawruss, so as he can bust up love matches between MissKreitmann and some good-looking retail salesman, Mawruss, what can dance the waltz A Number One and couldn't pay rent for light housekeeping on Chrystie Street."

"Well, Abe," Morris agreed, with a sigh of resignation, "if we got to hire her as a condition that Philip Hahn gives us a couple of good orders a season, Abe, I'm agreeable."

"Naturally," Abe replied, and carefully selecting a slightly-damaged cigar from the M to P first and second credit customers' box, he fell to assorting the sample line against Philip Hahn's coming that afternoon.

His task was hardly begun, however, when the store door opened to admit Max Fried and his sister-in-law. Abe immediately ceased his sample-assorting and walked forward to greet them.

"Hello, Max," he said.

Max stopped short, and by the simple process of thrusting out his waist-line assumed a dignity befitting the ceremony of introduction.

"Mr.Potash," he said severely, "this is MissGussie Kreitmann, my wife's sister, what I talked to you about."

Abe grinned shyly.

"All right," he said, and shook hands with MissKreitmann, who returned his grin with a dazzling smile.

"Mr.Fried tells me you like to come to work by us as a model. Ain't it?" Abe continued in the accents of the sucking dove. "So, I guess you'd better go over to MissCohen, the bookkeeper, and she'll show you where to put your hat and coat."

"Oh, I ain't in no hurry," MissKreitmann replied. "To-morrow morning will do."

"Sure, sure," Abe murmured. He was somewhat shocked by MissKreitmann's appearance, for while Max Fried's reservation, "only a little fat," had given him some warning, he was hardly prepared to employ so pronounced an Amazon as MissKreitmann. True, her features, though large, were quite regular, and she had fine black eyes and the luxurious hair that goes with them; but as Abe gazed at the convex lines of her generous figure he could not help wondering what his partner would say when he saw her.

As a matter of fact, at that precise moment Morris was taking in the entire situation from behind a convenient rack of raincoats, and was mentally designing a new line of samples to be called The P & P System. He figured that he would launch it with a good, live ad in the Daily Cloak and Suit Record, to be headed: Let 'Em All Come. We Can Fit Everybody. Large Sizes a Specialty.

"Do you think you will like it here?" Abe hazarded.

"Oh, sure," Max replied for his sister-in-law. "This ain't the first time she works in a cloak and suit house. She helps me out in the store whenever she comes to Buffalo. In fact, she knows part of your line already, Abe, and the rest she learns pretty quick."

"You won't find me slow, Mr.Potash," MissKreitmann broke in. "Maybe I ain't such a good model except for large sizes, but I learned to sell cloaks by my brother-in-law and by my uncle, Philip Hahn, before I could talk already. What I want to do now is to meet the trade that comes into the store."

"That's what you're going to do," Abe said. "I will introduce you to everybody."

The thought that this would be, perhaps, the only way to get rid of her lent fervor to his words, and Max shook him warmly by the hand.

"I'm much obliged," he said. "Me and Philip Hahn will be in sure in a couple of hours, and Gussie comes to work to-morrow morning."

Once more Abe proffered his hand to his new model, and a moment later the door slammed behind them.

"So, that's the party, is it?" said Morris, emerging from his hiding-place. "What's she looking for a job by us for, Abe? She could make it twice as much by a circus sideshow or a dime museum."

"Philip Hahn will be here in a couple of hours, Mawruss," Abe replied, avoiding the thrust. "I guess he's going to buy a big bill of goods, Mawruss."

"I hope so, Abe, because it needs quite a few big bills to offset the damage a model like this here MissKreitmann can do. In fact, Abe," he concluded, "I'd be just as well satisfied if MissKreitmann could give us the orders, and we could get Philip Hahn to come to work by us as a model. I ain't never seen him, Abe, but I think he's got a better shape for the line."

A singular devotion to duty marked every action of Emanuel Gubin, shipping clerk in the wholesale cloak and suit establishment of Potash & Perlmutter. That is to say, it had marked every action until the commencement of MissKreitmann's incumbency. In the very hour that Emanuel first observed the luster of her fine black eyes his heart gave one bound and never more regained its normal gait.

As for MissKreitmann, she saw only a shipping clerk, collarless, coatless and with all the grime of his calling upon him. Two weeks elapsed, however, and one evening, on Lenox Avenue, she encountered Emanuel, freed from the chrysalis of his employment, a natty, lavender-trousered butterfly of fashion. Thereafter she called him Mannie, and during business hours she flashed upon him those same black eyes with results disastrous to the shipping end of Potash & Perlmutter's business.

Packages intended for the afternoon delivery of a local express company arrived in Florida two weeks later, while the irate buyer of a Jersey City store, who impatiently awaited an emergency shipment of ten heavy winter garments, received instead half a hundred gossamer wraps designed for the sub-tropical weather of Palm Beach.

"I don't know what's come over that fellow, Mawruss," Abe said at last. "Formerly he was a crackerjack—never made no mistakes nor nothing; and now I dassen't trust him at all, Mawruss. Everything we ship I got to look after it myself, Mawruss. We might as well have no shipping clerk at all."

"You're right, Abe," Morris replied. "He gets carelesser every day. And why, Abe? Because of that MissKreitmann. She breaks us all up, Abe. I bet yer if that feller Gubin has took her to the theayter once, Abe, he took her fifty times already. He spends every cent he makes on her, and the first thing you know, Abe, we'll be missing a couple of pieces of silk from the cutting-room. Ain't it?"

"He ain't no thief, Mawruss," said Abe, "and, besides, you can't blame a young feller if he gets stuck on a nice girl like MissKreitmann, Mawruss. She's a smart girl, Mawruss. Mendel Immerglick, of Immerglick & Frank, was in here yesterday, Mawruss, and she showed him the line, Mawruss, and believe me, Mawruss, Immerglick says to me I couldn't have done it better myself."

"Huh!" Morris snorted. "A young feller like Immerglick, what buys it of us a couple of hundred dollars at a time, she falls all over herself to please him, Abe. And why? Because Immerglick's got a fine mustache and is a swell dresser and he ain't married. But you take it a good customer like Adolph Rothstein, Abe, and what does she do? At first she was all smiles to him, because Adolph is a good-looking feller. But then she hears him telling me a hard-luck story about his wife's operation and how his eldest boy Sammie is now seven already and ain't never been sick in his life, and last month he gets the whooping cough and all six of Adolph's boys gets it one after the other. Then, Abe, she treats Adolph like a dawg, Abe, and the first thing you know he looks at his watch and says he got an appointment and he'll be back. But he don't come back at all, Abe, and this noontime I seen Leon Sammet and Adolph in Wasserbauer's Restaurant. They was eating the regular dinner with chicken, Abe, and I seen Leon pay for it."

Abe received his partner's harangue in silence. His eyes gazed vacantly at the store door, which had just opened to admit the letter-carrier.

"Suppose we do lose a couple of hundred dollars trade," he said at length; "one customer like Philip Hahn will make it up ten times, Mawruss."

"Well, you'll lose him, too, Abe, if you don't look out," said Morris, who had concluded the reading of a typewritten letter with a scrawled postscript. "Just see what he writes us."

He handed over the missive, which read as follows:

Abe folded up the letter, and his mouth became a straight line of determination under his stubby mustache.

"I guess I fix that young feller," he cried, seizing a pen. He wrote:

On Saturday afternoon Morris Perlmutter was putting on his hat and coat preparatory to going home. He had just fired Mannie Gubin with a relish and satisfaction second only to what would have been his sensations if the operation had been directed toward MissKreitmann. As he was about to leave the show-room Abe entered.

"Oh, Mawruss," Abe cried, "you ought to see MissKreitmann. She's all broke up about Mannie Gubin, and she's crying something terrible."

"Is she?" Morris said, peering over his partner's shoulder at the grief-stricken model, who was giving vent to her emotions in the far corner of the salesroom. "Well, Abe, you tell her to come away from them light goods and cry over the blue satinets. They don't spot so bad."

MissGussie Kreitmann evidently knew how to conceal a secret sorrow, for outwardly she remained unchanged. She continued to scowl at those of her employers' customers who were men of family, and beamed upon the unmarried trade with all the partiality she had displayed during Mannie Gubin's tenure of employment. Indeed, her amiability toward the bachelors was if anything intensified, especially in the case of Mendel Immerglick.

Many times he had settled lunch checks in two figures, for MissKreitmann's appetite was in proportion to her size. Moreover, a prominent Broadway florist was threatening Mendel with suit for flowers supplied MissKreitmann at his request. Nor were there lacking other signs, such as the brilliancy of Mendel's cravats and the careful manicuring of his nails, to indicate that he was paying court to MissKreitmann.

"I think, Abe," Morris said finally, "we're due for an inquiry from the Flower City Company about Immerglick & Frank."

"I hope not, Mawruss," Abe replied. "I never liked them people, Mawruss. In fact, last week Mendel Immerglick struck me for new terms—ninety instead of sixty days—and he wanted to give me a couple of thousand dollar order. I turned him down cold, Mawruss. People what throw such a bluff like Mendel Immerglick don't give me no confidence, Mawruss. I'm willing to sell him up to five hundred at sixty days, but that's all." "Oh, I don't know, Abe," Morris protested. "A couple of bright boys like Mendel Immerglick and Louis Frank can work up a nice business after a while."

"Can they?" Abe rejoined. "Well, more likely they work up a nice line of credit, Mawruss, and then, little by little, they make it a big failure, Mawruss. A feller what curls his mustache like Mendel Immerglick ain't no stranger to auction houses, Mawruss. I bet yer he's got it all figured out right now where he can get advance checks on consignments."

"I think you do the feller an injury, Abe," said Morris. "I think he means well, and besides, Abe, business people is getting so conservative that there ain't no more money in failures."

"I guess there's enough for Mendel Immerglick," Abe said, and dismissed the subject.

Two weeks later the anticipated letter arrived in the following form:

"Well, Mawruss," Abe said, as he finished reading the letter, "I'm sorry to get this letter. I don't know what I could tell it him about this fellow Immerglick. Now, if it was a responsible concern like Henry Feigenbaum, of the H.F. Cloak Company, it would be different."

"Henry Feigenbaum!" Morris exclaimed. "Why, he's only got one eye."

"I know it, Mawruss," Abe replied, "but he's got six stores, and they're all making out good. But, anyhow, Mawruss, I ain't going to do nothing in a hurry. I'll make good inquiries before I answer him."

"What's the use of making inquiries?" Morris protested. "Tell him it's all right. I got enough of this MissKreitmann already, Abe. She's killed enough trade for us."

"What!" Abe cried. "Tell him it's all right, when for all I know Mendel Immerglick is headed straight for the bankruptcy courts, Mawruss. You must be crazy, Mawruss. Ain't Hahn said he's coming down next month to buy his spring goods? What you want to do, Mawruss? Throw three to five thousand dollars in the street, Mawruss?"

"You talk foolishness, Abe," Morris rejoined. "Once a man gets married, his wife's family has got to stand for him. Suppose he does bust up; would that be our fault, Abe? Then Philip Hahn sets him up in business again, and the first thing you know, Abe, we got two customers instead of one. And I bet yer we could get Philip Hahn to guarantee the account yet."

"Them theories what you got, Mawruss, sounds good, but maybe he busts up before they get married, and then, Mawruss, we lose Philip Hahn's business and Max Fried's business, and we are also out a sterling silver engagement present for MissKreitmann. Ain't it?" He put on his hat and coat and lit a cigar.

"I guess, Mawruss, I'll go right now," he concluded, "and see what I can find out about him."

In three hours he returned and entered the show-room.

"Well, Abe," Morris cried, "what did you find out? Is it all right?"

Abe carefully selected a fresh cigar and shook his head solemnly.

"Nix, Mawruss," he said. "Mendel Immerglick is nix for a nice girl like MissKreitmann."

He took paper out of his waistcoat pocket for the purpose of refreshing his memory.

"First, I seen Moe Klein, of Klinger & Klein," he went on. "Moe says he seen Mendel Immerglick, in the back of Wasserbauer's CafÉ, playing auction pinochle with a couple of loafer salesmen at three o'clock in the afternoon, and while Moe was standing there already them two low-lives set Immerglick back three times on four hundred hands at a dollar a hundred, double double."

"And what was Moe doing there?" Morris asked.

"I wasn't making no investigation of Moe, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Believe me, I got enough to do to find out about Immerglick. Also, Moe tells me that Immerglick comes into their place and wants to buy off them three thousand dollars at ninety days."

"And did they sell him?" Morris asked.

"Did they sell him?" Abe cried. "If you was to meet a burglar coming into the store at midnight with a jimmy and a dark lantern, Mawruss, I suppose you'd volunteer to give him the combination of the safe. What? No, Mawruss, they didn't sell him. Such customers is for suckers like Sammet Brothers, Mawruss. Leon Sammet says they sold him three thousand at four months. Also, Elenbogen sold him a big bill, same terms, Mawruss. But big houses like Wechsel, Baum & Miller and Frederick Stettermann won't sell him at any terms, Mawruss."

"If everybody was so conservative like Wechsel, Baum & Miller," said Morris, "the retailers might as well go out of business."

"Wait a bit, Mawruss," Abe replied. "That ain't all. Louis Frank's wife is a sister to the Traders' and Merchants' Outlet, of Louisville—you know that thief, Marks Leshinsky; and Louis Frank's uncle, Mawruss, is Elkan Frank & Company, them big swindlers, them auctioneers, out in Chicago."

Abe sat down and dipped his pen in the inkwell with such force that the spotless surface of Morris' shirt, which he had donned that morning, assumed a polkadot pattern. It was, therefore, some minutes before Abe could devote himself to his task in silence. Finally, he evolved the following:

"It ain't no more than he deserves, Mawruss," Abe commented after Morris had read the letter.

"No," Morris admitted, "but after the way MissKreitmann got that feller Gubin in the hole and the way she treated Adolph Rothstein, Abe, it ain't no more than she deserves, neither."

For several days afterward MissKreitmann went about her work with nothing but scowls for Potash & Perlmutter's customers, married and unmarried alike.

"The thing goes too far, Abe," Morris protested. "She kills our entire trade. Hahn or no Hahn, Abe, I say we should fire her."

Abe shook his head. "It ain't necessary, Mawruss," he replied.

"What d'ye mean?"

"The girl gets desperate, Mawruss. She fires herself. She told me this morning she don't see no future here, so she's going to leave at the end of the week. She says she will maybe take up trained nursing. She hears it that there are lots of openings for a young woman that way."

Morris sat down and fairly beamed with satisfaction.

"That's the best piece of news I hear it in a long time, Abe," he said. "Now we can do maybe some business."

"Maybe we can," Abe admitted. "But not with Philip Hahn."

"Why not?" Morris cried. "We done our best by him. Ain't we? Through him we lost it a good customer, and we got to let go a good shipping clerk."

"Not a good shipping clerk, Mawruss," Abe corrected.

"Well, he was a good one till MissKreitmann comes."

Abe made no reply. He took refuge in the columns of the Daily Cloak and Suit Record and perused the business troubles items.

"Was it our fault that Immerglick is N. G., Abe?" Morris went on. "Is it——"

"Ho-ly smokes!" Abe broke in. "What d'ye think of that?"

"What do I think of what?" Morris asked.

"Immerglick & Frank," Abe read aloud. "A petition in bankruptcy was this day filed against Immerglick & Frank, doing business as the 'Vienna Store.' This firm has been a heavy purchaser throughout the trade during the past two months, but when the receiver took possession there remained only a small stock of goods. The receiver has retained counsel and will examine Louis Frank under Section 21 A of the Bankruptcy Act. It is understood that Mendel Immerglick, the senior partner, sailed for Hamburg last week on the Kaiserin Luisa Victoria and intends to remain in Germany for an indefinite time."

Abe laid down the paper with a sigh of relief.

"If that don't make us solid with Philip Hahn, Mawruss," he said, "nothing will."

MissKreitmann left at the end of the week, and Abe and Morris wasted no time in vain regrets over her departure, but proceeded at once to assort and make up a new line of samples for Philip Hahn's inspection. For three days they jumped every time a customer entered the store, and Abe wore a genial smile of such fixity that his face fairly ached.

At length, on the Thursday following MissKreitmann's resignation, while Abe was flicking an imaginary grain of dust from the spotless array of samples, the store door burst open and a short, stout person entered. Abe looked up and, emitting an exclamation, rushed forward with both arms extended in hearty greeting.

"Mister Hahn," he cried, "how do you do?"

The newcomer drew himself up haughtily, and his small mustache seemed to shed sparks of indignation.

Abe stopped short in hurt astonishment.

"Is th-there a-anything the matter?" he faltered.

"Is there anything the matter!" Mr.Hahn roared. "Is there anything the matter! That's a fine question for you to ask."

"W-w-why?" Abe stuttered. "Ain't everything all right?"

Mr.Hahn, with an effort that bulged every vein in his bald forehead, subsided into comparative calm.

"Mr.Potash," he said, "I bought from you six bills of goods in the last few months. Ain't it?"

Abe nodded.

"And I never claimed no shortages and never made no kicks nor nothing, but always paid up prompt on the day like a gentleman. Ain't it?"

Abe nodded again.

"And this is what I get for it," Mr.Hahn went on bitterly. "My own niece on my wife's side, I put her in your care. I ask you to take it an interest in her. You promise me you will do your best. You tell me and Max Fried you will look after her"—he hesitated, almost overcome by emotion—"like a father. You said that when I bought the second bill. And what happens? The only chance she gets to make a decent match, you write me the feller ain't no good. Naturally, I think you got some sense, and so I busts the affair up."

"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."