"Well, Abe," Morris Perlmutter remarked as they sat in their showroom ten days after the events above noted, "I did mix up in Alex Kronberg's family matters and, with all your croaking, what is the result? Alex has got a good partner; Uncle Mosha has got a good home, and ourselves we got a good order for three thousand dollars, which otherwise we wouldn't got at all."
"What are you talking nonsense, Mawruss?" Abe said. "Things wouldn't turned out the way they did if it wouldn't be I met Max Gershon in Hammersmith's. That's what started it, Mawruss."
"Nothing of the kind, Abe," Morris retorted. "What started it, Abe, was me when I went down to Madison Street and give Uncle Mosha that cigar, Abe. I tell you, Abe, it's an old saying and a true one: Throw away a loaf of bread in the water, y'understand, and sooner or later, Abe, it would come home like chickens to roost."
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RAINCOAT KING
"The table is all right, Mawruss," Abe Potash remarked as he consulted the timecard of the Long Island Railroad one hot July afternoon. "The table is all right; I ain't kicking about the table, y'understand, but the class of people which they stay in the house, Mawruss, is pretty schlecht. My Rosie couldn't get along with 'em at all."
"You don't tell me!" Morris replied. "Riesenberger's is got a big reputation, Abe, and when me and Minnie stayed there two years ago there was an elegant class of people stopping in the house. Would you believe me, Abe, I tried to get up a game of auction pinocle there and I couldn't do it! Nobody would play less than a dollar a hundred. I'm surprised to hear the place is run down so."
"Oh, if the house's got a big reputation for auction pinocle, Mawruss, then that's something else again! They play just as high as former times. Sidney Koblin lost forty dollars last night. With my own eyes I seen it, Mawruss; and his father looks on and don't say nothing."
"What does Max Koblin care for forty dollars, Abe?" Morris said. "The feller's a millionaire. He's got ten pages of advertising in the Cloak and Suit Monthly Gazette. I bet yer he spends more as forty dollars for one page already. Wait; I'll show it to you."