"So, Perlmutter," Louis commented, without any introductory greeting, "you are trying to do us again!"
Morris turned and stared icily at Kleiman.
"I don't want to talk to you at all, Kleiman," he replied; "and, anyhow, Kleiman, I don't know what you mean—we are trying to do you! The shoe pinches on the other foot, Kleiman, when you just stop to consider you are stealing away from us that feller Harkavy, which all he knows we taught him."
Louis Kleiman emitted a short, raucous guffaw.
"Well, what are you kicking about?" he said. "You stole him back again—ain't it?"
"Stole him back again!" Morris repeated. "What are you talking nonsense, Kleiman? We wouldn't take that feller back in our store, not if we could get him to come to work for two dollars a week."
"Yow!" Kleiman exclaimed skeptically. "I don't suppose you know the feller left us at all?"
"I did not," Morris replied promptly; "and if he did, Kleiman, I couldn't blame him. A feller doesn't want to work all his life for ten dollars a week."
"What d'ye mean, ten dollars a week? We paid Harkavy fifteen and we offered him twenty-five; but the feller wouldn't stay with us at all. For two weeks now he acts uneasy and yesterday he leaves us."
"That's all right, Kleiman," Morris said as the train drew into Ninety-sixth Street. "You could easy steal somebody else from another concern." Kleiman glared at Morris and was about to utter a particularly incisive retort when the train stopped.