“Well, I say it anyhow,” admitted Schnitt reluctantly.

“Ersten, you offer him a month to rest his eyes, don’t you?”

“I don’t promise him I move!” bristled Ersten.

“We understand that,” soothed Johnny, “all of us.  Schnitt, you’ll take some of Mr. Ersten’s work home with you from this place, won’t you?”

“Sure, I do that,” consented Schnitt eagerly.  “Louis, what is in the shop?”

Ersten had a struggle of his own.

“All what was in when you left,” he bravely confessed.  “That coat for Mrs. Follison gives me trouble for a week!”

“She’s got funny shoulders,” commented Schnitt with professional impersonality.  “It’s the left one.  You cut it—­Let me see it.”

There was a sibilant sound as of many suppressed sighs of relief when Heinrich walked into the cutting room, but no man grinned or gave more than a curt nod of greeting—­for the forbidding eye of Louis Ersten glared fiercely upon them.  He strode across to the table held sacred to himself and spread down a piece of cloth, bounded by many curves.  Heinrich Schnitt gave it but one comprehensive glance.

“Na, na, na!” he shrilly commented.  “Here it is wrong!” And, grabbing up a slice of chalk, he made a deft swoop toward the material.  Suddenly his arm stayed in mid air and he laid down the chalk with a muscular effort.  “I think I take this home,” he firmly announced.

“Heinrich, you come back after the work.  Just now we go with Mr. Gamble to Schoppenvoll’s and have a glass of Rheinthranen!” Ersten said.

“The Rheinthranen!” repeated Heinrich in awe; and for the first time his eyes moistened.  “Louis, we was always friends!” And they shook hands.

Johnny Gamble, keen as he was, did not quite understand it; but, nevertheless, he had penetration enough to stroll nonchalantly out into the show-room, where Louis and Heinrich presently joined him, chattering like a Kaffe-klatsch; and they all walked round to Schoppenvoll’s.

While Schnitt thanked Johnny for his interference until that modest young man blushed, Ersten argued seriously in whispers with Shoppenvoll to secure a bottle of the precious wine that only he and Schoppenvoll and Kurzerhosen had a right to purchase.  Johnny drank his with dull wonder.  It tasted just like Rhine wine!

While Heinrich Schnitt was back in the cutting room, carefully selecting every coat in the shop to take home with him, Ersten drew Johnny near the door.

“I fool him!” he announced with grinning cuteness.  “I move right away.  You get my lease for the best price what that smart-Aleck Lofty offered me.  And another word:  Whenever you want a favor you come to me!”

Johnny walked into the Lofty establishment with the feeling of a Napoleon.  “How much will you give me for the Ersten lease?” he suggested out of a clear sky.

Young Willis Lofty sighed in sympathy with his bank-account.