ion."

"I know, Mawruss," Abe replied; "but she ain't the only person what
works hard around here, Mawruss. I work hard, too, Mawruss, but I ain't
getting no vacation. That's a new _idee_ what you got, Mawruss."

"Everybody gives it their bookkeeper a vacation, Abe," Morris protested.

"Do they?" Abe rejoined. "Well, if bookkeepers gets vacations, Mawruss,
where are we going to stop? First thing you know, Mawruss, we'll be
giving cutters vacations, and operators vacations, and before we get
through we got our workroom half empty yet and paying for full time
already. If she wants a vacation for two weeks I ain't got no
objections, Mawruss, only we don't pay her no wages while she's gone."

"You can't do that, Abe," Morris said. "That would be laying her off,
Abe; that wouldn't be no vacation."

"But we got to have somebody here to keep our books while she's away,
Mawruss," Abe cried. "We got to make it a living, Mawruss. We can't shut
down just because Miss Cohen gets a vacation. And so it stands, Mawruss,
we got to pay Miss Cohen wages for doing _nothing_, Mawruss, and also we
got to pay it wages to somebody else for doing something what Miss Cohen
should be doing when she ain't, ain't it?"

"Sure, we got to get a substitute for her while she's away," Morris
agreed; "but I guess it won't break us."

"All right, Mawruss," Abe replied; "if I got to hear it all summer about
this here vacation business I'm satisfied. I got enough to do in the
store without worrying about that, Mawruss. Only one thing I got to say
it, Mawruss: we got to have a bookkeeper to take her place while she's
away, and you got to attend to _that_, Mawruss. That's all I got to
say."

Morris nodded and hastened to break the good news to Miss Cohen, who for
the remainder of the week divided her time between Potash & Perlmutter's
accounts and a dozen multicolored railroad folders.

"Look at that, Mawruss," Abe said as he gazed through the glass paneling
of the show-room toward the bookkeeper's desk. "That girl ain't done it
a stroke of work since we told her she could go already. What are we
running here, anyway: a cloak and suit business or a cut-rate ticket
office?"

"Don't you worry about _her_, Abe," Morris replied. "She's got her
cashbook and daybook posted and she also got it a substitute. He's
coming this afternoon."

"_He's_ coming?" Abe said. "So she got it a young _feller_, Mawruss?"

"Well, Abe," Morris replied, "what harm is the