departure.

"Mawruss is right," Abe declared. "You was told distinctively we
wanted it two lofts, not one, and here you come back with a one-loft
proposition."

Henochstein rose to leave.

"If you think it you could get two up-to-date lofts on Seventeenth,
Eighteenth or Nineteenth Street, Abe, for what you pay it here in this
dinky place," he said, "you got another think coming."

He opened the show-room door.

"And also, Abe," he concluded, "if I got it a partner what made it a
slave of me, like Perlmutter does you, I'd go it alone, that's all I
got to say."

After Henochstein left, Abe was a prey to bitter reflections, which were
only interrupted by his partner's return to the show-room a quarter of
an hour later.

"Well, Abe," Morris cried, "you got your turn at this here moving
business; let me try a hand at it once."

"Go ahead, Mawruss," Abe said wearily. "You always get your own way,
anyhow. You say I am the dawg, Mawruss, and you are the tail, but
I guess you got it the wrong way round. I guess the tail is on the
other foot."

Morris shrugged.

"That's something what is past already, Abe," he replied. "I was just
talking to Wasserbauer, and he says he got it a friend what is a sort of
a real-estater, a smart young feller by the name Sam Slotkin. He says if
Slotkin couldn't find it us a couple of lofts, nobody couldn't."

"I'm satisfied, Mawruss," Abe said. "If Slotkin can get us lofts we
move, otherwise we stay here. So far we made it always a living here,
Mawruss, and I guess we ain't going to lose all our customers even if we
don't move; and that's all there is to it."

Mr. Sam Slotkin was doubtless his own ideal of a well-dressed man. All
the contestants in a chess tournament could have played on his clothes
at one time, and the ox-blood stripes on his shirt exactly matched the
color of his necktie and socks. He had concluded his interview with
Morris on the morning following Henochstein's fiasco, before Abe's
arrival at the office, and he was just leaving as Abe came in.

"Who's that, Mawruss?" Abe asked, staring after the departing figure.

"That's Sam Slotkin," Morris replied. "He looks like a bright young
feller."

"I bet yer he looks bright," Abe commented. "He looks so bright in them
vaudeville clothes that it almost gives me eye-strain. I suppose he says
he can get us the lofts."

"Sure," Morris answered; "he says he can fix us up all right."

"I hope so," Abe said skeptically,