along. Mama Schnitt, divided into two
bulges by an apron-string and wearing a man's broad-brimmed straw hat,
stood placidly at the end of the row for company.

"Good morning, Mr. Schnitt," said Johnny cheerfully. "I have just come
from Ersten's. He wants you to come back."

"Did he say it?" asked Heinrich with no disguise of his eagerness.

"Not exactly," admitted Johnny, "but he said that you are the best coat
cutter in New York and that your job's waiting for you."

"I know it," asserted Heinrich. "Is he going to move?"

"Not just yet," was the diplomatic return. "He will after you go back
to work, I think."

"I never work in that place again," announced the old man with a sigh.
"I said it."

"That shop isn't light enough, is it?" suggested the messenger.

"There is no light and no room," agreed Heinrich.

"Your eyes began to give out on you, didn't they?"

Heinrich straightened himself and his waxen-white face turned a
delicate pink with indignation.

"My eyes are like a young man's yet!" he stoutly maintained.

"You don't read much any more," charged Mama Schnitt.

"My glasses don't fit," he retorted to that.

"You changed them last winter," she insisted. "Now, papa, don't be
foolish! You know your eyes got bad in Louis Ersten's dark workroom.
You never tell lies. Say it!"

Heinrich struggled for a moment between his pride and his honesty.

"Well, maybe they ain't just so good as they was," he admitted.

"That's what I told Ersten," stated Johnny. "He's worried stiff about
it! I think he'll move so you have a lighter workroom if you go back."

"When he moves I come."

"He won't move till you do."

"Then there is nothing," concluded Schnitt resignedly, and stooped over
to pull another weed. "Mama, maybe Mr. Gamble likes some of that wine
Carrie's husband made the year he died."

"Ja voll," assented Mamma Schnitt heartily, and toddled away to get it.

"I'll fix it for you," offered Johnny. "You go to Ersten and say you
will come back; then Ersten will get a new place before you start to
work."

Heinrich straightened up with alacrity this time, his face fairly
shining with pleasure.

"I do that much," he agreed.

"Good!" approved Johnny. "You want to be careful what you say, though,
for Ersten is stubborn."

"He is stubborn like a mule," Schnitt pointed out with sober gravity.

"You must say you have come back to work in that place."

"I'll never do it!" indignantly declared Heinrich