"Nu, Dishkes!" Elkan said. "You are pretty early, ain't it?"
Dishkes nodded.
"I'm a Schlemiel, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "and that's all there is to it. Yesterday I went to work and lost my wife's picture."
Elkan slapped his thigh with his hand.
"Well, ain't I a peach?" he said. "I am getting so mixed up with these here antics I completely forgot to tell Yetta anything about it. I didn't even show it to her, Dishkes; so you must leave me have it for a day longer, Dishkes."
As he spoke he drew the cabinet photograph from his breast pocket and handed it to Dishkes, who gazed earnestly at it for a minute. Then, resting his elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands and burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing, whereat Elkan jumped from his seat and passed hurriedly out of the room. As he walked toward the showroom the strains of a popular song came from behind a rack.
"Sam," he bellowed, "who asks you you should whistle round here?"
The whistling ceased and Sam emerged from his hiding-place with a feather brush.
"I could whistle without being asked," Sam replied; "and furthermore, Mr. Lubliner, when I am dusting the samples I must got to whistle; otherwise the dust gets in my lungs, which I value my lungs the same like you do, Mr. Lubliner, even if I would be here only a boy working on stock!"
With this decisive rejoinder he resumed dusting the samples, while Elkan returned to his office, where he found that Dishkes had regained his composure.