o gives you a present for twenty-five
dollars?"

"Why you did, Abe," Morris replied.

"Me?" Abe cried. "Say, Mawruss, I want to tell you something. If you can
buy a fine sterling silver bumbum dish, like what I give you, for
twenty-five dollars, I'll take it off your hands for twenty-seven-fifty
any day!"

"But, Abe----"

"Another thing, Mawruss," Abe went on. "If you don't like that dish,
there ain't no law compelling you to keep it, you understand. Send it
back. My Rosie can use it. Maybe we ain't so stylish like your Minnie,
Mawruss; but if we don't have bumbums every day, we could put dill
pickles into it!"

"One moment," Morris protested. "I ain't saying anything about that
bumbum dish, Abe. All I meant that if you give _me_ such a high-price
present when _I_ get married, that's all the more reason why we should
give a high-price present to a customer what we will make money on. I
ain't no customer, Abe."

"I know you ain't," said Abe. "You're only a partner, and I don't make
no money on you, neither."

Morris shrugged his shoulders.

"What's the use of wasting more time about it, Abe?" he said. "Go ahead
and buy a present."

"Me buy it?" Abe cried. "You know yourself, Mawruss, I ain't a success
with presents. You draw the check and get your Minnie to buy it. She's
an up-to-date woman, Mawruss, while my Rosie is a back number. She don't
know nothing but to keep a good house, Mawruss. Sterling silver bumbum
dishes she don't know, Mawruss. If I took her advice, you wouldn't got
no bumbum dish. Nut-picks, Mawruss, from the five-and-ten-cent store,
that's what you'd got. You might appreciate them, Mawruss; but a
sterling silver----"

At this juncture Morris took refuge in the outer office, where Miss
Cohen, the bookkeeper, was taking off her wraps.

"Miss Cohen," he said, "draw a check for twenty-five dollars to bearer,
and enter it up as a gratification to Hyman Maimin."

At dinner that evening Morris handed the check over to his wife.

"Here Minnie," he said, "Abe wants you should buy a wedding present for
a customer."

"What kind of a wedding present?" Mrs. Perlmutter asked.

"Something in solid sterling silver, like that bumbum dish what Abe gave
us."

"But, Mawruss," she protested, "you know we got that bonbon dish locked
away in the sideboard, and we never take it out. Let's give 'em
something useful."

"Suit yourself," Morris replied. "Only don't bother me about it."

"All right," Mrs.