"Sit down and have a cup of coffee, anyhow," Sol Klinger coaxed.
"I wouldn't have no coffee," Abe said as he took the vacant chair next to Sol. "I'll have a cup of chocolate. To a man in my conditions, Sol, coffee is poison already."
"Why, what's the matter, Abe?" Sol asked.
"I'm a sick feller, Sol," Abe went on. "The rheumatism I got it all over my body. I assure you I couldn't go out on the road this fall. I had to hire it a salesman."
"Is that so?" Sol Klinger replied. "Well, we had to hire it a new salesman, too—a young feller by the name Moe Rabiner. Do you know him?"
"I heard about him already," Abe said. "How is he doing?"
"Well, in Buffalo, last week, he ain't done hardly nothing," said Sol; "but he's in Chicago this week and he done a little better. He sent us a nice order this morning, I bet yer. Four thousand dollars from the Arcade Mercantile Company."
Abe was swallowing a huge mouthful of cocoa, and when Sol vouchsafed this last piece of information the cocoa found its way to Abe's pharynx, whence it was violently ejected into the face of a mild-mannered errand-boy sitting opposite. The errand-boy wiped his face while Sol slapped Abe on the back.
"What's the matter, Abe?" Sol asked solicitously. "Do you got bronchitis, too, as well as rheumatism?"
"Go ahead, Sol," Abe gasped. "Tell me about this here order."