Potash & Perlmutter Part 37

Abe looked at Morris, who stood grinning broadly in the show-room doorway.

"Give me an introduction once, Abe," Morris said.

"He don't have to give us no introduction," the elder female exclaimed.

"Me, I am Mrs. Sarah Mashkowitz, and this here lady is my sister, Mrs.

Blooma Sheikman, _geborn_ Smolinski."

"That ain't my fault that you got them names," Abe said. "I see it now that you're my wife's father's brother's daughter, ain't it? So if you're going to make a touch, make it. I got business to attend to."

"We ain't going to make no touch, Potash," Mrs. Mashkowitz declared. "We would rather die first."

"All right," Abe replied heartlessly. "Die if you got to. You can't make me mad."

Mrs. Mashkowitz ignored Abe's repartee.

"We don't ask nothing for ourselves, Potash," she said, "but we got it a sister, your wife's own cousin, Miriam Smolinski. She wants to get married."

"I'm agreeable," Abe murmured, "and I'm sure my Rosie ain't got no objections neither."

Mrs. Sheikman favored him with a look of contempt.

"What chance has a poor girl got it to get married?" she asked.

"When she ain't got a dollar in the world," Mrs. Mashkowitz added. "And her own relatives from her own blood is millionaires already."

"If you mean me," Abe replied, "I ain't no millionaire, I can a.s.sure you. Far from it."

"Plenty of money you got it, Potash," Mrs. Mashkowitz said. "Five hundred dollars to you is to me like ten cents."

"He don't think no more of five hundred dollars than you do of your life, lady," Morris broke in with a raucous laugh.

"Do me the favor, Mawruss," Abe cried, "and tend to your own business."

"Sure," Morris replied, as he turned to go. "I thought I was helping you out, Abe, that's all."

He repaired to the rear of the store, while Abe piloted his two visitors into the show-room.

"Now what is it you want from me?" he asked.

"Not a penny she got it," Mrs. Mashkowitz declared, breaking into tears.

"And she got a fine young feller what is willing to marry her and wants it only five hundred dollars."

"Only five hundred dollars," Mrs. Sheikman moaned. "Only five hundred dollars. _Ai vai!_"

"Five hundred dollars!" Abe exclaimed. "If you think you should cry till you get five hundred dollars out of me, you got a long wet spell ahead of you. That's all I got to say."

"Might he would take two hundred and fifty dollars, maybe," Mrs.

Sheikman suggested hopefully through her tears.

"Don't let him do no favors on my account," Abe said; "because, if it was two hundred and fifty b.u.t.tons it wouldn't make no difference to me."

"A fine young feller," Mrs. Mashkowitz sobbed. "He got six machines and two hundred dollars saved up and wants to go into the cloak and suit contracting business."

"Only a hundred dollars if the poor girl had it," Mrs. Sheikman burst forth again; "maybe he would be satisfied."

"S'enough!" Abe roared. "I heard enough already."

He banged a sample table with his fist and Mrs. Sheikman jumped in her seat.

"That's a heart what you got it," she said bitterly, "like Haman."

"Haman was a pretty good feller already compared to me," Abe declared; "and also I got business to attend to."

"Come, Sarah," Mrs. Sheikman cried. "What's the use talking to a bloodsucker like him!"

"Wait!" Mrs. Mashkowitz pleaded; "I want to ask him one thing more. If Miriam got it this young feller for a husband, might you would give him some of your work, maybe?"

"Bloodsuckers don't give no work to n.o.body," Abe replied firmly. "And also will you get out of my store, or will you be put out?"

He turned on his heel without waiting for an answer and joined Morris in the rear of the store.

Ten minutes later he was approached by Jake, the s.h.i.+pping-clerk.

"Mr. Potash," Jake said, "them two ladies in the show-room wants to know if you would maybe give that party they was talking about a recommendation to the President of the Koscius...o...b..nk?"

"Tell 'em," Abe said, "I'll give 'em a recommendation to a policeman if they don't get right out of here. The only way what a feller should deal with a nervy proposition like that, Mawruss, is to squash it in the bud."

In matters pertaining to real estate Marks Henochstein held himself to be a virtuoso.

"If anyone can put it through, I can," was his motto, and he tackled the job of procuring an uptown loft for Potash & Perlmutter with the utmost confidence.

"In the first place," he said when he called the next day, "you boys has got too much room."

"Boys!" Morris exclaimed. "Since when did we go to school together, Henochstein?"

"Anyhow, you got too much room, ain't yer?" Henochstein continued, his confidence somewhat diminished by the rebuff. "You could get your workrooms and show-rooms all on one floor, and besides----"

Morris raised his hand like a traffic policeman halting an obstreperous truckman.

"S'enough, Henochstein," he said. "S'enough about that. We ain't giving you no pointers in the real-estate business, and we don't want no suggestions about the cloak and suit business neither. We asked it you to get us two lofts on Seventeenth, Eighteenth or Nineteenth Street, the same size as here and for the same what we pay it here rent. If you can't do it let us know, that's all, and we get somebody else to do it.

Y'understand?"

"Oh, I can do it all right."

"Sure he can do it," Abe said encouragingly.

"And I'll bring you a list as big as the telephone directory to-morrow,"

Henochstein added as he went out. "But all the same, boys--I mean Mr.