ricks, Mawruss: you don't got to pay no taxes on 'em."

That evening B. Rashkin again presented himself at the One Hundred and
Eighteenth Street residence of Morris Perlmutter, and with him came
Isaac Pinsky, of the firm of Pinsky & Gubin, architects. Mr. Pinsky had
a roll of blue-prints under his arm and a strong line of convincing
argument at the tip of his tongue, and the combination proved too much
for Morris. Before Rashkin and Pinsky left that evening, Morris had
undertaken to purchase a plot thirty-seven feet six inches by one
hundred feet, adjacent to a similar plot to be purchased by Rashkin.
Moreover, he and Rashkin engaged themselves to erect two houses, one on
each lot, from the plans and specifications that Pinsky held under his
arm. Each house was to be identical with the other in design,
construction and material, and an appointment was then and there made
for noon the next day at the office of Henry D. Feldman, attorney at
law, for the purpose of more formally consummating the deal.

Thus, when Morris entered the show-room the next morning it became his
duty to break the news to his partner, and he approached Abe with a
now-for-it air. "Well, Abe," he said, "you was wrong."

"Sure, I was, Mawruss," Abe replied amiably. "With you I am always
wrong. What's the matter now?"

"You was wrong about that feller Rashkin," Morris explained. "He was up
to my house last night, and put the same proposition up to me what he
told it you yesterday, and the way I figure it, Abe, we would make money
on the deal."

"I ain't so good on figures what you are, Mawruss," Abe replied. "All I
can figure is I got enough to do to attend to my own business, Mawruss,
without going into the building business."

"But we wouldn't got to go into the building business, Abe," Morris
protested. "All we got to do is to put down eight thousand dollars for
the lot. Then the I. O. M. A. makes us a building loan of twenty-five
thousand dollars. Rashkin's got plans and specifications drawn by Pinsky
& Gubin, a first-class, A Number One archy-teck concern, for which he
wouldn't charge us nothing, and then, Abe----"

He paused to fix Abe's attention before finishing his explanation.

"And then, Abe," he continued, "we hire my Minnie's brother, Ferdy, what
knows the building business from A to Z, to build it the house for us.
All we would got to do is to put up the four thousand apiece, Abe, and
when the house is finished Rashkin says we co