"I stood a whole lot of Decembers already," he said, "and I guess I wouldn't die just yet a while."
As if to demonstrate his endurance, he emitted a loud whoop, and started off on a fit of wheezing that bulged every vein in his forehead and left him shaken and exhausted in the chair that Max had vacated.
"Yes, boys," he gasped, "the only thing which seems to ease it is smoking. Now, you wouldn't believe that, would you?"
Max evidenced his faith by producing a large black cigar and handing it to Pinsky.
"Why don't you try another doctor, Aaron?" Sam Zaretsky asked. Pinsky raised his right hand with the palm outward and flipped his fingers.
"I've went to every professor in this country and the old country," he declared, "and they couldn't do a thing for me, y'understand. They say as I grow older, so I would get better, and certainly they are right. This is nothing what I got it now. You ought to of heard me when I was a young feller. Positively, Max, I got kicked out of four boarding-houses on account the people complained so. One feller wanted to make me arrested already, such hearts people got it."
Max Fatkin nodded sympathetically, and thus encouraged Aaron continued his reminiscences.
"Yes, boys," he said, "in them days I worked by old man Baum on Catherine Street. Six dollars a week and P.M.'s I made it, but even back in 1880 P.M.'s was nix. The one-price system was coming in along about that time, and if oncet in a while you could soak an Italiener six twenty-five for a five dollar overcoat, you was lucky if you could get fifty cents out of old man Baum. Nowadays is different already. Instead of young fellers learning business by business men like old man Baum, they go to business colleges yet, and certainly I don't say it ain't just as good."
Sam Zaretsky exchanged significant glances with his partner, Max Fatkin, and they both puffed hard on their cigars.
"You take my nephew, Fillup, for instance," Aaron went on. "There's a boy of sixteen which just graduated from business college, and the boy writes such a hand which you wouldn't believe at all. He gets a silver medal from the college for making a bird with a pen—something remarkable. The eyes is all little dollar marks. I took it down to Shenkman's picture store, and seventy-five cents that sucker charges me for framing it."
"That's nothing, Aaron," Sam Zaretsky broke in, with a diplomatic attempt at a conversational diversion. "That's nothing at all. I could tell you myself an experience which I got with Shenkman. My wife's mother sends her a picture from the old country yet——"
"Not that I am kicking at all," Aaron interrupted, "because it was worth it. I assure you, Sam, I don't begrudge seventy-five cents for that boy, because the boy is a good boy, y'understand. The boy is a natural-born bookkeeper. Single entry and double entry, he could do it like nothing, and neat—that boy is neat like a pin."
"Huh, huh!" Max grunted.
"Yes," Aaron added, "you didn't make no mistake when you got me to bring you Fillup for a bookkeeper."
It was at this point that Max threw diplomacy to the winds.
"Got you to bring us a bookkeeper!" he exclaimed. "Why, Aaron, I ain't said a word about getting us this here—now—Fillup for a bookkeeper. We already hired it a bookkeeper."
"What?" Aaron cried. "Do you mean to say you got the nerve to sit there and tell me you ain't asked me I should bring you a bookkeeper?"
"Why, Aaron," Sam interrupted with a withering glance at his partner. "I ain't saying nothing one way or the other, y'understand, but I don't think Max could of asked you because, only this morning, Aaron, Max and me was talking about this here, now—what's-his-name—and we was saying that nowadays what future was there for a young feller as a bookkeeper? Ain't it? I says to Max distinctively: 'If Aaron would bring us his nephew we would give him a job on stock. Then the first thing you know the boy gets to be a salesman and could make his five thousand dollars a year.' But what could a bookkeeper expect to be? Ain't it? At the most he makes thirty dollars a week, and there he sticks."
"Is that so?" Aaron retorted ironically. "Well, look at Louis Sen. I suppose Louis sticks at thirty a week, hey?"
"Louis Sen is something else again," Sam replied. "Louis Sen is a crook, Aaron, not a bookkeeper. That feller comes into our place two years ago, and he ain't got five cents in his clothes, and we thought we was doing him a charity when we hired him. It reminds you of the feller which picks up a frozen snake and puts it in his pants-pocket to get warm, and the first thing you know, Aaron, the snake wakes up, and bites the feller in the leg. Well, that's the way it was with Louis Sen. Gratitude is something which the feller don't understand at all. But you take this here nephew of yours, and he comes from decent, respectable people, y'understand. There's a young feller, Aaron, what we could trust, Aaron, and so when he comes to work by us on stock, Aaron, we give him a show he should learn all about the business, and you take it from me, Aaron, if the boy ain't going out on the road to sell goods for us in less than two years he ain't as smart as his uncle is, and that's all I can say."
Aaron smiled, and Sam looked triumphantly at his partner.
"All right, Sam," Aaron commented, "I see you got the boy's interest at heart. So I would bring the boy down here on Monday morning. And now, Max, let's get to work on them misses' Norfolk suits. I want eight of them blue serges."
There was something about Miss Miriam Meyerson that suggested many things besides ledgers and trial balances, and she would have been more "in the picture" had she been standing in front of a kitchen table with her sleeves tucked up and a rolling-pin grasped firmly in her large, plump hands.
"I don't know, Sam," Max Fatkin remarked on Monday. "That girl don't look to me an awful lot like business. Mind you, I ain't kicking that she looks too fresh, y'understand, because she reminds me a good deal of my poor mother, selig."
"Ain't that the funniest thing?" Sam Zaretsky broke in. "I was just thinking to myself she is a dead ringer for my sister Fannie. You know my sister, Mrs. Brody?"
"I bet yer," Max Fatkin said fervently. "That's one fine lady, Mrs. Brody. Me and my Esther had dinner there last Sunday. And, while I got to admit my Esther is a good cook, y'understand, Mrs. Brody—that's a good cook, Sam. We had some fleisch kugel there, Sam, I could assure you, better as Delmonico's—the Waldorf, too."
Sam nodded.
"If she is as good a bookkeeper as Fannie is a cook, Max," he replied, "I am satisfied. Sol Klinger says that she is A Number One. Always prompt to the minute and a hard worker."
"Well, why did he fire her, Sam?" Max asked.
"He didn't fire her. She got a sister living in Bridgetown married to Harris Schevrien, and Miss Meyerson goes up there last spring right in the busy time. Of course Klinger & Klein has got to let her go because under the circumstances, Max, she is the only sister Mrs. Schevrien got, y'understand. Then when the baby is two weeks old it gets sick, y'understand, and Miss Meyerson writes 'em not to expect her back before August. Naturally they got to fill her place, but Sol Klinger tells me she is a dandy, Max, and we should be lucky we got her."
"Well, certainly she don't seem to be loafing none," Max commented, with a glance toward the office where Miss Meyerson was making out the monthly statements. "So far what I could see she is working twicet as fast as Louis Sen, and we ain't paying her only fifteen dollars."
"Sure, I know," Sam said, "but you got to consider it we would also got to pay Fillup Pinsky five dollars a week, so we ain't in much on that."
"Why ain't we, Sam? I bet yer we would get our money's worth