younger brother, who was poring over a book of
sample swatches, "what do you think now?"

"Huh?" Lester grunted.

"The old man says we shouldn't make up them 1040's in nothing but
black, navy, brown, and smoke!"

Lester closed the book of sample swatches and sat down suddenly.

"Wouldn't that make you sick?" he said in tones of profound disgust. "I
tell you what it is, Max, if it wouldn't be that the old man can't run
the business forever, I'd quit right now. We've got a killing in sight
and he Jonahs the whole thing."

"I told you what it would be," Max said. "I seen Falkstatter in
Sarahcuse last week; and so sure as I'm standing here, Lester, I could
sold that feller a two-thousand dollar order if it wouldn't be for the
old man's back-number ideas. Didn't have a single pastel shade in my
trunks!"

"Where is he now?" Lester asked.

"Gone to lunch," Max replied.

Lester took up the sample swatches again and his eyes rested lovingly
on a delicate shade of pink.

"I hope he chokes," he said; but even though at that very moment Samuel
Gembitz sat in Hammersmith's restaurant, his cheeks distended to the
bursting point with _gefuellte Rinderbrust_, Lester's prayer went
unanswered. Indeed, Samuel Gembitz had the bolting capacity of a
boa-constrictor, and, with the aid of a gulp of coffee, he could have
swallowed a grapefruit whole.

"Ain't you scared that you would sometimes hurt your di-gestion, Mr.
Gembitz?" asked Henry Schrimm, who sat at the next table.

Now this was a sore point with Sam Gembitz, for during the past year he
had succumbed to more than a dozen bilious attacks as a result of his
voracious appetite; and three of them were directly traceable to
_gefuellte Rinderbrust_.

"I ain't so delicate like some people, Henry," he said rather sharply.
"I don't got to consider every bit of meat which I am putting in my
mouth. And even if I would, Henry, what is doctors for? If a feller
would got to deny himself plain food, Henry, he might as well jump off
a dock and _fertig_."

Henry Schrimm was an active member of as many fraternal orders as there
are evenings in the week, and he possessed a ready sympathy that made
him invaluable as a chairman of a sick-visiting or funeral committee;
for at seven P.M. Henry could bring himself to the verge of tears over
the bedside of a lodge brother, without unduly affecting his ability to
relish a game of auction pinochle at half-past eight, sharp.

"Jumping off a d