"Twenty years is a long time," Abe commented. "I seen lots of trade in twenty years."
"Trade you seen it, yes," Mr. Small said, "but I wasn't trade."
He paused and looked straight at Abe. "Think, Abe," he said. "When did you seen me last?"
Abe gazed at him earnestly and then shook his head. "I give it up," he said.
"Well, Abe," Mr. Small murmured, "the last time you seen me I went out to buy ten dollars' worth of schnapps."
"What!" Abe cried.
"But that afternoon there was a sure-thing mare going to start over to Guttenberg just as I happened to be passing Butch Thompson's old place, and I no more than got the ten dollars down than she blew up in the stretch. So I boarded a freight over to West Thirtieth Street and fetched up in Walla Walla, Washington."
"Look a-here!" Abe gasped. "You ain't Scheuer Smolinski, are you?"
Mr. Small nodded.
"That's me," he said. "I'm Scheuer Smolinski or Sidney Small, whichever you like. When me and Jake Berkowitz started this here Small Drygoods Company we decided that Smolinski and Berkowitz was too big a mouthful for the Pacific Slope, so we slipped the 'inski' and the 'owitz.' Scheuer Small and Jacob Burke didn't sound so well, neither. Ain't it? So, since there ain't no harm in it, we just changed our front names, too, and me and him is Sidney Small and James Burke."