"I got to change here," he announced; "but when I see you again, Perlmutter, I would tell you what you are."
"I don't got to tell you what you are, Kleiman," Morris concluded as he opened his evening paper. "You know only too well."
"Rosher!" Kleiman hissed as he hurled himself into the mob of passengers that blocked the exit.
Morris nodded sardonically and commenced to read his paper. He desisted immediately, however, when his eye fell upon a cut accompanying Felix Geigermann's display advertisement. It was a beaded marquisette costume, made in obvious imitation of one of Potash & Perlmutter's leaders; and the retail price quoted by Geigermann was precisely one dollar less than Potash & Perlmutter's lowest wholesale figure.
"That's some of Harkavy's work," Morris muttered; and for the remainder of the journey he was once more plunged in the gloomiest cogitation. Almost automatically he alighted at the Brooklyn Bridge and boarded a Madison Street Car; and it was not until the jolting, old-fashioned vehicle had nearly reached its eastern terminus that he discerned the house number furnished to him by Steuermann. He hurried to the rear platform and jumped to the street, where he collided violently with a short, bearded person.
"Excuse me!" Morris cried; then he recognized his victim. "Harkavy!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"I am coming to say good-by to a friend," Harkavy replied with some show of confusion. "I got to go to Chicago to-morrow."
"Chicago!" Morris repeated. "Why, what are you doing in Chicago, Harkavy?"
"I am—now—going to got a job out there," Harkavy replied—"a very good job."
Morris drew his former assistant cutter to the sidewalk. He had temporarily forgotten the object of his visit to the lower East Side in the sudden conception of an idea, which was no less than the rehiring of Harkavy.