"Ain't it terrible a strong, healthy young feller should go off like that?" Abe Potash remarked, as he and his partner sat in their showroom one spring morning. "I give you my word I was sitting over in Hammersmith's so close to him as I am to you, Mawruss, when it happened."
"Was there much excitement?" Morris asked.
"I bet yer was there excitement!" Abe exclaimed. "Hammersmith sends across the street for a doctor, and you ought to seen Leon Sammet the way he acted. 'For Gawd's sake, doctor,' he says, 'couldn't you do nothing for him?' he says. 'He's got a wife and family,' he says, 'and we shipped him two thousand dollars goods only last Saturday.'"
"Did they?" Morris asked.
"How should I know?" Abe said. "Sammet is such a liar, Mawruss, he couldn't tell the truth no matter how surprised he would be. But one thing is sure, Mawruss—Gladstein did owe Sammet Brothers for a big bill of goods and the widder paid them out of the insurance."
"Could she do that when the feller leaves a family, Abe?" Morris inquired.
"The feller didn't leave no family, Mawruss," Abe answered. "Leon Sammet just takes a chance when he said that to the doctor. As a matter of fact, Mawruss, Gladstein was one of them fellers which he ain't got a relation in the world. Mrs. Gladstein neither, except im Russland. That's the way it goes, Mawruss. A feller which he has got so many cousins and uncles that he gets writer's cramp already indorsing accommodation paper for 'em, understand me, lives to be an old man yet, and all the time his relations and his wife's relations is piling up on him; while a man like Gladstein which you could really say has a chance to enjoy life, Mawruss, is got to die."
Morris nodded.
"Don't I know it?" he commented. "And I suppose the widder sells out the store."
"Oser a stück," Abe said. "She's still running the store, and making a fair success of it too."