o
dollars. I wouldn't let that beat get ahead of me not for one cent, Sol.
If I would sit down with my eyes closed for five minutes, Sol, that
loafer would do me for my shirt. I must be on the job all the time, Sol,
otherwise that feller would have me on the streets yet."

For a quarter of an hour longer Abe reviled Morris, until Sol was moved
to protest.

"If I thought that way about my partner, Abe," he said, "I'd go right
down and see Feldman and have a dissolution yet."

"That's what I will do, Sol," Abe declared. "Why should I tie myself up
any longer with a cutthroat like that? I tell you what we'll do, Sol.
We'll go over to the store and see what else Miss Cohen found it out. I
bet you he rings in a whole lot of items on me with the petty cash while
I was away on the road."

Together they left Hammersmith's and repaired at once to Potash &
Perlmutter's place of business. As they entered the show-room Miss Cohen
emerged from her office with a sheet of paper in her hand.

"Mr. Potash," she said, "when you were in Chicago last fall you drew on
the firm for a hundred dollars, and by mistake I credited it to you on
your expense account. It ought to have been charged on your drawing
account. So that makes your total drawing account sixty-three hundred
dollars."

Abe stopped short and looked at Sol.

"What was that you said, Miss Cohen?" he asked.

"I said that I made a mistake in that statement, and you're overdrawn on
Mr. Perlmutter forty-eight dollars," Miss Cohen concluded.

"Then hurry up quick, Miss Cohen," Abe cried, "and draw a check in my
personal check book on the Kosciusko Bank to Potash & Perlmutter for
forty-eight dollars and see that it's deposited the first thing
to-morrow morning."

He handed Sol a cigar.

"Yes, Sol," he said, "if Mawruss would find it out that I am overdrawn
on him forty-eight dollars, he would abuse me like a pickpocket. That
feller never gives me credit for being square at all, Sol. I would be
afraid for my life if he would get on to that forty-eight dollars. Why,
the very first thing you know, Sol, he would be going around telling
everybody I was a crook and a cutthroat. That's the kind of feller
Mawruss is, Sol. I could treat him always like a gentleman, Sol, and if
the smallest little thing happens to us, 'sucker' is the least what he
calls me."

At this juncture the green baize doors leading into the hall burst open
and Morris himself leaped into the show-room. His