"You find it in the Talmud that we are commanded to promote marriages, ain't it, Mawruss?" he said. "But one thing's sure, Mawruss--you can't run a cloak-and-suit business according to the Talmud." There was a short silence. "Did you ask her why she comes back, Mawruss?" he said. Morris took the end off a particularly black cigar with one vicious bite. "I didn't have to ask her. She told me," he said bitterly. "She says a smart girl can get a husband any day, she says; but a good job is hard to find, and when you got one, you should stick to it!" CHAPTER TEN AUX ITALIENS "What are you talking nonsense, Abe," Morris Perlmutter declared hotly, one morning in December; "an elegant class of people lives in the houses. On the same floor with me lives Harry Baskof, which he is just married a daughter of Maisener & Finkman. You remember Max Finkman, for years a salesman for B. Senft & Co. Downstairs is a lawyer, a young feller by the name Sholy, and on the ground floor is Doctor Eichendorfer." "With lawyers, Mawruss," Abe said, "we got enough to do downtown, ain't it? Doctors also, Mawruss. I am once living next door to a doctor, and every time I meet that feller he says 'How do you do?' to me like he would mean, 'It's a fine day for an operation.' I get a pain in my right side whenever I think of him even." "Never mind, Abe," Morris rejoined. "Oncet in a while a doctor in the house comes in pretty handy--a lawyer too. A feller could get a whole lot of pointers riding up and down in an elevator with a lawyer. Ain't it? The only trouble about the house is the family above us, which the lady is all the time hollering like somebody would be giving her a licking already. Minnie says that she hears from our girl that her girl says she was an opera singer in the old country." "Yow, an opera singer in the old country!" Abe exclaimed skeptically. "In Russland they don't got so many opera singers as all that." "What d'ye mean, in Russland?" Morris demanded. "The woman ain't from Russland at all. She's an Italiener. I am coming up in the elevator last night with her husband and a friend, and the way they are talking to each other it sounds like a couple of bushelers in a factory. I tell you the honest truth, Abe, for me it don't make no difference if a feller would be a Frencher _oder_ an Irishman, so long as he treats me white I would be a good feller, Abe; but an Italiener, Abe, is something else again. An Italiener would as lief stick a knife into you as look at you, Abe, and they smell the whole house out with garlic yet." "There's lots of things smells worse as garlic, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "and as for sticking a knife into you, that's all _schmooes_. There's lots of people worser as Italieners, I bet yer, and when it comes right down to it, Mawruss, I'd a whole lot sooner have a couple Italieners working for me as some of them fellers which they are coming over from Russland."