“I know,” Abe cried; “but we don’t have to hire no loft what we don’t want to, Mawruss.  Henochstein can’t compel you to pay twicet as much what we’re paying now.  Ain’t it?  So what is the harm if we should maybe ask him to find a couple of lofts for us?  Ain’t it?”

“All right, Abe,” Morris concluded, “if I must go crazy listening to you talking about it I sooner move first.  So go ahead and do what you like.”

“Well, the fact is,” said Abe, “I told Marks Henochstein he should find it a couple lofts for us this morning, Mawruss, agreeing strictly that we should not pay him nothing, as he gets a commission from the landlord already.”

Morris received this admission with a scowl.

“For a feller what’s got such a nerve like you got it, Abe,” he declared, “I am surprised you should make it such a poor salesman.”

“When a man’s got it a back-number partner, Mawruss, his hands is full inside and outside the store, and so naturally he loses it a few customers oncet in a while,” Abe replied.  “But, somebody’s got to have nerve in a business, Mawruss, and if I waited for you to make suggestions we would never get nowhere.”

Morris searched his mind for an appropriate rejoinder, and had just formulated a particularly bitter jibe when the store door opened to admit two shabbily-dressed females.

“Here, you,” Abe called, “operators goes around the alley.”

The elder of the two females drew herself up haughtily.

“Operators!” she said with a scornful rising inflection.

“Finishers, also,” Abe continued.  “This here door is for customers.”

“You don’t know me, Potash,” she retorted.  “Might you don’t know this lady neither, maybe?”

She indicated her companion, who turned a mournful gaze upon the astonished Abe.

“But we know you, Potash,” she went on.  “We know you already when you didn’t have it so much money what you got now.”

Her companion nodded sadly.

“So, Potash,” she concluded, “your own wife’s people is operators and finishers; what?”

Abe looked at Morris, who stood grinning broadly in the show-room doorway.

“Give me an introduction once, Abe,” Morris said.

“He don’t have to give us no introduction,” the elder female exclaimed.  “Me, I am Mrs. Sarah Mashkowitz, and this here lady is my sister, Mrs. Blooma Sheikman, geborn Smolinski.”

“That ain’t my fault that you got them names,” Abe said.  “I see it now that you’re my wife’s father’s brother’s daughter, ain’t it?  So if you’re going to make a touch, make it.  I got business to attend to.”

“We ain’t going to make no touch, Potash,” Mrs. Mashkowitz declared.  “We would rather die first.”

“All right,” Abe replied heartlessly.  “Die if you got to.  You can’t make me mad.”

Mrs. Mashkowitz ignored Abe’s repartee.

“We don’t ask nothing for ourselves, Potash,” she said, “but we got it a sister, your wife’s own cousin, Miriam Smolinski.  She wants to get married.”