"All right, Mr. Perlmutter," he murmured; "make for me a date and I will look the lady over."
When Morris entered his place of business the next morning he found his partner examining the advertising columns of a morning paper with an absorption hardly justified by the tabulated list of births, marriages and deaths at which he was gazing.
"What's biting you now, Abe?" Morris demanded.
"What d'ye mean, what's biting me?" Abe rejoined, and Morris blushed in the consciousness of his oversleeping that morning by more than half an hour.
"Say, lookyhere, Abe," he cried. "I don't know what you are driving into, understand me, but if you think you could get brogus at me just because I am ten minutes late once in a while, y'understand, let me tell you I am catching a twelve o'clock train from Mount Vernon last night, and not alone I am talking myself blue in the face to that feller Gurin, y'understand, but when I got home already I couldn't get to sleep till I told the whole thing to my Minnie yet."
Abe nodded slowly.
"Yes, Abe," Morris continued, "I got to go over the story twice over already, and even then, y'understand, my Minnie gets mad because I didn't contradict myself.
"Only one idee that woman got it in her head, Abe. If I am out of the house schon ten minutes already you couldn't tell her otherwise but I am playing auction pinocle."
"Well, you might just as well of been playing auction pinocle last night for all the good it would do us."