mise," asserted Johnny.

"Then he moves," declared Heinrich, fully satisfied.

The mediator conveyed Heinrich to Ersten's with much the same feeling
that he would have endured in carrying a full plate of soup--and he had
that feeling all through the conference.

"Hello, Heinrich!" greeted Ersten with indifference.

"Hello, Louis!" returned Schnitt with equal nonchalance; then he
assumed a rigid pose and recited: "I have come back to work."

"In this place?" asked Ersten, with parrotlike perfection.

A lump came into Heinrich Schnitt's throat. He struggled with that
lump, but the simple word "Yes" would not come.

"I say yes; but I don't--"

Johnny jerked him violently by the sleeve.

"He said 'Yes'," he informed Ersten.

"Well, maybe," Ersten was decent enough to admit.

There was an uncomfortable pause in which the two men evinced a slight
disposition to glare at each other.

"Mr. Schnitt's eyes are bad," suggested Johnny hopefully.

"My eyes are like a young man's!" asserted Schnitt, his pride coming
uppermost.

"He needs a month to rest them," insisted the buffer, becoming a trifle
panic-stricken; and he tapped the sole of Ersten's shoe with his foot.

"Must it take a month, Heinrich?" implored Ersten, taking the cue.

"Well, how soon you move?" inquired Schnitt.

"I don't promise I move!" flared Ersten.

"I never come back--"

"Till his eyes are better," hastily interrupted Johnny. "Look here, you
fellows! You're balling up this rehearsal! Now let's get together.
Schnitt, you'll come back to work in this place, won't you?"

"Well, I say it anyhow," admitted Schnitt reluctantly.

"Ersten, you offer him a month to rest his eyes, don't you?"

"I don't promise him I move!" bristled Ersten.

"We understand that," soothed Johnny, "all of us. Schnitt, you'll take
some of Mr. Ersten's work home with you from this place, won't you?"

"Sure, I do that," consented Schnitt eagerly. "Louis, what is in the
shop?"

Ersten had a struggle of his own.

"All what was in when you left," he bravely confessed. "That coat for
Mrs. Follison gives me trouble for a week!"

"She's got funny shoulders," commented Schnitt with professional
impersonality. "It's the left one. You cut it--Let me see it."

There was a sibilant sound as of many suppressed sighs of relief when
Heinrich walked into the cutting room, but no man grinned or gave more
than a curt nod of greeting--for the forbidding eye of Louis Ersten
gl