ys said it,
Mawruss, you are a cracker-jack, high-grade, A number one designer!"

CHAPTER THREE

DEAD MEN'S SHOES

"There goes that sucker, Aaron Kronberg, from Port Sullivan," Abe Potash
declared to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, as they looked from the
windows of their showroom to the opposite sidewalk some four stories
below. "Ain't it funny that feller would never buy from us a dollar's
worth more goods?"

"The reason ain't hard to find, Abe," Morris replied. "Oncet a garment
buyer gets into the hands of a competitor like Leon Sammet, it's all
off. I bet yer Leon tells him we are all kinds of crooks and swindlers."

"What could you expect from a cut-throat like Leon Sammet? That feller
is no good and his father before him is also a thief. I know his people
from the old country yet. One was worser as the other."

"Well, there's nothing the matter with Aaron's cousin, Alex Kronberg,
anyhow," Morris observed. "That feller does a fine business in
Bridgetown, and Sammet Brothers could no more take his trade away from
us than they could fly."

"That ain't our fault, Mawruss," Abe rejoined. "Sammet Brothers is fly
enough to do anything, Mawruss; but, the way Aaron Kronberg hates Alex
Kronberg, if they was to sell Alex a single garment, y'understand, Aaron
would never buy from them a dollar's worth more goods so long as he
lived."

"Ain't it a disgrace them two fellers is such enemies, Abe?"

"Alex ain't no enemy, Mawruss," Abe said. "It's Aaron what's the enemy.
Alex don't trouble himself at all. He told me so himself. But that's the
way it goes, Mawruss. Mosha Kronberg, Hillel Kronberg, and Elkan
Kronberg was three brothers which you don't see nowadays at all--more
like friends than brothers, Mawruss. Hillel died ten years ago and I
thought it would broke Mosha's heart. He looked after Hillel's widow and
Hillel's boy, Alex, because Mosha never married, Mawruss. He was a born
uncle. Then, when Elkan died a year later, I never seen a feller so
broke up like Mosha in all my life. He goes to work and sends Elkan's
boy, Aaron, to business college, and Elkan's widow he takes to live with
Hillel's widow, all together with himself and the two boys in that house
of his on Madison Street. For three years they lived that way, and in
the rest of the house Mosha couldn't keep any tenants at all. At last he
gives Aaron a couple thousand dollars and Alex the same, and Aaron
buys a store up in Port Sullivan, and Alex