my grandfather would be deef, dumb and blind, Scheikowitz?
Furthermore, Scheikowitz, believe me I would sooner got one good live
business man for a partner, Scheikowitz, than a million dead rabbis for
a grandfather, and don't you forget it. So if you are going to spend
the whole morning making a _Geschreierei_ over that letter, Scheikowitz,
we may as well close up the store _und fertig_."

With this ultimatum Marcus Polatkin walked rapidly away toward the
cutting room, while Philip Scheikowitz sought the foreman of their
manufacturing department and borrowed a copy of a morning paper. It was
printed in the vernacular of the lower East Side, and Philip bore it to
his desk, where for more than half an hour he alternately consulted the
column of steamboat advertising and made figures on the back of an
envelope. These represented the cost of a journey for two persons from
Minsk to New York, based on Philip's hazy recollection of his own
emigration, fifteen years before, combined with his experience as
travelling salesman in the Southern States for a popular-price line of
pants.

At length he concluded his calculations and with a heavy sigh he put on
his hat just as his partner returned from the cutting room.

"Nu!" Polatkin cried. "Where are you going now?"

"I am going for a half an hour somewheres," Philip replied.

"What for?" Polatkin demanded.

"What for is my business," Philip answered.

"Your business?" Polatkin exclaimed. "At nine o'clock in the morning
one partner puts on his hat and starts to go out, _verstehst du_, and
when the other partner asks him where he is going it's his business,
_sagt er_! What do you come down here at all for, Scheikowitz?"

"I am coming down here because I got such a partner, Polatkin, which if
I was to miss one day even I wouldn't know where I stand at all,"
Scheikowitz retorted. "Furthermore, you shouldn't worry yourself,
Polatkin; for my own sake I would come back just so soon as I could."

Despite the offensive repartee that accompanied Philip's departure,
however, he returned to find Polatkin entirely restored to good humour
by a thousand-dollar order that had arrived in the ten-o'clock mail; and
as Philip himself felt the glow of conscious virtue attendant upon a
good deed economically performed, he immediately fell into friendly
conversation with his partner.

"Well, Marcus," he said, "I sent 'em the passage tickets, and if you
ain't agreeable that Borrochson comes to