"You see, Sam," Max commented, "I told you you shouldn't reckon up how much chickens you will got till the hen lays 'em."
Max Fatkin visited a buyer at an uptown hotel on his way to the office the following morning, so that it was nearly nine before he entered his showroom. As he walked from the elevator he glanced toward Miss Meyerson's desk. It was vacant.
"Sam," he cried, "where's Miss Meyerson?"
Sam Zaretsky emerged from behind a rack of skirts and shrugged his shoulders.
"She's late the first time since she's been with us, Max," he replied.
"Might she is sick, maybe," Max suggested. "I'll ring up her cousin, the doctor, and find out."
"That's a good idee," Sam replied. Max was passing the elevator door when it opened with a scrape and a clang.
"Hallo, Max!" a familiar voice cried.
Max turned toward the elevator and gasped, for it was Pinsky who stepped out. His wonder grew to astonishment, however, when he beheld Aaron tenderly assisting Miss Meyerson to alight from the elevator.
"Good morning," she said. "I'm late."
"That's all right," Max cried. "Any one which is always so prompt like you has a right to be late oncet in a while."
He looked at Aaron shyly and wet his lips with his tongue.
"Well," he began, "how's the boy?"
"Fillup is feeling fine, Gott sei dank," Aaron replied. "But never mind Fillup now. I come here because I got to tell you something, Max. Where's Sam?"
"Here I am, Aaron," Sam said, as he came fairly running from the showroom. "And you don't got to tell us nothing, Aaron, because a feller could buy goods where he wants to. Always up to three months ago you was a good friend to us, Aaron, and even if you wouldn't buy nothing from us at all we are glad to see you around here oncet in a while, anyhow."
"But, Sam," Aaron replied, "give me a chance to say something. Goods I ain't buying it to-day. I got other things to buy."
He turned to Miss Meyerson with a wide, affectionate grin on his kindly face.
"Yes, Sam," he continued, "I got a two-and-a-half carat blue-white solitaire diamond ring to buy."
"What!" Sam cried, while Max gazed at Miss Meyerson with his eyes bulging.
"That's right," Aaron went on; "a feller ain't never too old to make a home, and even if there would be ten years difference in our ages, ten years ain't so much."
"Especially when it's nearer twenty," Sam added gallantly.
"Well, we won't quarrel about it," Aaron said. "The thing is, Max, that a woman ain't got no business in business unless she's got to, and Miriam ain't got to so long as I could help it. Yes, Sam, three months from to-day you and Max and Mrs. Fatkin and Mrs. Zaretsky would all come to dinner at our house and Miriam would make the finest gefüllte fische which it would fairly melt in your mouth."
"I congradulate you, Miss Meyerson," Sam said. "We are losing the best bookkeeper which we ever got."
"Well, that's all right, Sam," Aaron cried. "You know where you could always get another. Fillup ain't going to hold that job with them suckers any longer."
"And since we aren't going to be married for two months yet," Miss Meyerson added, "I'll keep my position here and break Philip into his new job."
"That suits us fine," Sam declared. "And to show you we ain't small we will start him at the same money what we pay Miss Meyerson—fifteen dollars a week."
Aaron turned toward the two partners and extended both his hands.
"Boys," he said, "I don't know what I could say to you."
"Don't say nothing," Max interrupted. "The boy is worth it, otherwise we wouldn't pay it. Business is business."
"I know it, boys," he said; "but a business man could have also a heart, ain't it?"
Max nodded.
"And you boys," Aaron concluded, "you got a heart, too, believe me. What a heart you got it! Like a watermelon!"
He looked at Miss Meyerson for an approving smile and, having received it, he gave final expression to his emotions of friendship and gratitude in the worst coughing-spell of his asthmatic career.
CHAPTER TWO
OPPORTUNITY
"What is brokers?" Mr. Marcus Shimko asked. "A broker is no good, otherwise he wouldn't be a broker. Brokers is fellers which they couldn't make a success of their own affairs, Mr. Zamp, so they butt into everybody else's. Particularly business brokers, Mr. Zamp. Real-estate brokers is bad enough, and insurings brokers is a lot of sharks also; but for a cutthroat, a low-life bum, understand me, the worst is a business broker!"
"That's all right, too, Mr. Shimko," Harry Zamp said timidly; "but if I would get a partner with say, for example, five hundred dollars, I could make a go of this here business."
Mr. Shimko nodded skeptically.
"I ain't saying you couldn't," he agreed, "but where would you find such a partner? Nowadays a feller with five hundred dollars don't think of going into retail business no more. The least he expects is he should go right away into manufacturing. Jobbing and retailing is nix for such a feller, understand me—especially clothing, Mr. Zamp, which nowadays even drug stores carries retail clothing as a side line, so cut up the business is."
Harry Zamp nodded gloomily.
"And, furthermore," Shimko added, "business brokers could no more get you a partner with money as they could do miracles, Mr. Zamp. Them days is past, Mr. Zamp, and all a business broker could do nowadays is to bring you a feller with experience, and you don't need a business broker for that, Mr. Zamp. Experience in the retail clothing business is like the measles. Everybody has had it."
"Then what should I do, Mr. Shimko?" Zamp asked helplessly. "I must got to get a partner with money somewhere, ain't it? And if I wouldn't go to a business broker, who then would I go to? A bartender?"
"Never mind!" Mr. Shimko exclaimed. "Some people got an idee all bartenders is bums, but wunst in a while a feller could get from a bartender an advice also. I got working for me wunst in my place down on Park Row a feller by the name Klinkowitz, which he is now manager of the Olympic Gardens on Rivington Street; and if I would have took that feller's advice, Mr. Zamp, instead I am worth now my tens of thousands I would got hundreds of thousands already. 'When you see a feller is going down and out, Mr. Shimko,' he always says to me, 'don't show him no mercy at all. If you set 'em up for a live one, Mr. Shimko,' he says, 'he would anyhow buy a couple of rounds; but a dead one, Mr. Shimko,' he says, 'if you show him the least little encouragement, understand me, the least that happens you is he gets away with the whole lunch-counter.' Am I right or wrong?"
Mr. Zamp nodded. He resented the imputation that he was a dead one, but he felt bound to agree with Mr. Shimko, in view of the circumstance that on the following day he would owe a month's rent with small prospect of being able to pay it. Indeed, he wondered at Mr. Shimko's amiability, for as owner of the Canal Street premises Shimko had the reputation of being a harsh landlord. Had Zamp but known it, however, store property on Canal Street was not in active demand of late, by reason of the new bridge improvements, and Shimko's amiability proceeded from a desire to retain Zamp as a tenant if the latter's solvency could be preserved.
"But I couldn't help myself, Mr. Zamp," Shimko went on. "I got no business keeping a restaurant at all."
As a matter of fact, Mr. Shimko's late restaurant was of the variety popularly designated as a "barrel-house," and he had only retired from the business after