s though, instead of their nearest competitor, Leon were
Potash & Perlmutter's best customer.

"The English language bounces off of that woman like water from a duck's
neck," Leon said, "which every five minutes she comes up here and talks
to me in French high speed with the throttle wide open like a racing-car
already."

"And the exhaust must be something terrible," Abe said.

"I am nearly frozen from opening the windows to let out her
conversation," Leon said, "and especially this morning, when I thought I
could get a lot of letter-writing done without being interrupted, on
account of the holiday."

"So that's the reason why everything is closed up!" Morris exclaimed.

"But Christmas ain't for pretty near two weeks yet," Abe said.

"What has Christmas got to do with it?" Leon retorted. "To-day is a
holiday because President Wilson arrives in Paris."

"And you are working here?" Abe cried.

"Why not?" Leon asked.

"You mean to say that President Wilson is arriving in Paris to-day and
you ain't going to see him come in?" Morris exclaimed. "What for an
American are you, anyway?"

"Say, for that matter, President Wilson has been arriving in New York
hundreds of times in the past four years," Leon said, "and I 'ain't
heard that you boys was on the reception committee exactly."

"That's something else again," Abe said. "In New York we've got business
_enough_ to do without fooling away our time rubbering at parades, but
President Wilson only comes to Paris once in a lifetime."

"And some of the people back home is kicking because he comes to Paris
even _that_ often," Leon commented.

"_Let_ 'em kick," Morris declared, "which the way some Americans runs
down President Wilson only goes to show that it's an old saying and a
true one that there is no profit for a man in his own country, so go
ahead and write your letters if you want to, Leon, but Abe and me is
going down-town to the Champs Elizas and give the President a couple of
cheers like patriotic American sitsons should ought to do."

"In especially," Abe added, "as it is a legal holiday and we wouldn't
look at no model garments to-day."

II

SETTLING THE PRELIMINARIES

"After all, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, as he sat with his partner,
Morris Perlmutter, in their hotel room on the night after the
President's arrival in Paris, "a President is only human, and it seems
to me that if they would of given him a chance to go quietly to a hotel
and w