make his five thousand dollars
a year.' But what could a bookkeeper expect to be? Ain't it? At the
most he makes thirty dollars a week, and there he sticks."

"Is that so?" Aaron retorted ironically. "Well, look at Louis Sen. I
suppose Louis sticks at thirty a week, hey?"

"Louis Sen is something else again," Sam replied. "Louis Sen is a
crook, Aaron, not a bookkeeper. That feller comes into our place two
years ago, and he ain't got five cents in his clothes, and we thought
we was doing him a charity when we hired him. It reminds you of the
feller which picks up a frozen snake and puts it in his pants-pocket to
get warm, and the first thing you know, Aaron, the snake wakes up, and
bites the feller in the leg. Well, that's the way it was with Louis
Sen. Gratitude is something which the feller don't understand at all.
But you take this here nephew of yours, and he comes from decent,
respectable people, y'understand. There's a young feller, Aaron, what
we could trust, Aaron, and so when he comes to work by us on stock,
Aaron, we give him a show he should learn all about the business, and
you take it from me, Aaron, if the boy ain't going out on the road to
sell goods for us in less than two years he ain't as smart as his uncle
is, and that's all I can say."

Aaron smiled, and Sam looked triumphantly at his partner.

"All right, Sam," Aaron commented, "I see you got the boy's interest at
heart. So I would bring the boy down here on Monday morning. And now,
Max, let's get to work on them misses' Norfolk suits. I want eight of
them blue serges."

* * * * *

There was something about Miss Miriam Meyerson that suggested many
things besides ledgers and trial balances, and she would have been more
"in the picture" had she been standing in front of a kitchen table with
her sleeves tucked up and a rolling-pin grasped firmly in her large,
plump hands.

"I don't know, Sam," Max Fatkin remarked on Monday. "That girl don't
look to me an awful lot like business. Mind you, I ain't kicking that
she looks too fresh, y'understand, because she reminds me a good deal
of my poor mother, _selig_."

"Ain't that the funniest thing?" Sam Zaretsky broke in. "I was just
thinking to myself she is a dead ringer for my sister Fannie. You know
my sister, Mrs. Brody?"

"I bet yer," Max Fatkin said fervently. "That's one fine lady, Mrs.
Brody. Me and my Esther had dinner there last Sunday. And, while I