Aaron took up his violin and looked at it through new eyes. "Why ain't it genu-ine?" he asked. "I should tell you why it ain't!" Abe exclaimed. "If you would know what I know about them things, Shellak, you wouldn't ask me such a question at all. Do you doubt my word?" "Why should I doubt your word, Mr. Potash?" Aaron said. "In the inside is the paper and that's all I know about it. So, if you would give me a hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Potash, you could keep the fiddle, bow, case _und fertig_." For some minutes they haggled over the bargain, and at length they closed at a hundred and twenty-five dollars, for which Abe gave Shellak his personal check. [Illustration: "Do you know anything about them old violins?"] "And you shouldn't say nothing to Mr. Perlmutter about it," Abe concluded, "because I want to make a present of it as a surprise to my partner." * * * * * When Abe came downtown the following morning he wore so marked an air of pleased mystery that Morris became irritated. "Let me in on this too, Abe," he said. "Let you in on what, Mawruss?" Abe asked innocently. "I don't know what you mean at all." "You know very well what I mean," Morris rejoined. "You ain't coming around here grinning like a barn door for nothing." "I give you right about that, Mawruss," Abe said. "I got in a good _Schlag_ at Leon Sammet and Moe Rabiner last night, Mawruss, I bet yer. I got from Geigermann a repeat order on them two-piece velvet suits--seven hundred and fifty dollars; and do you know how I done it?" "Chloroformed him," Morris suggested ironically. "That's all right, Mawruss," Abe retorted. "Go ahead and joke if you want to. Maybe I couldn't play the fiddle with my knees and maybe I don't know nothing about _spieling_ pianners neither, y'understand; but I got a little gumption, too, Mawruss, and don't you forget it." He retired to the cutting room with a set expression on his face, as though to imply that wild horses could not drag from him the secret of Felix Geigermann's renewed patronage. For twenty minutes he remained firm in his resolve not to gratify his partner's curiosity; and then as Morris continued to whistle cheerfully over the sample-rack in the front of the loft, he returned to the showroom. "Yes, Mawruss," he said; "some fellers if they would do what I done with Felix Geigermann they wouldn't give their partner a minute's peace. For months together, Mawruss, they would throw it up to him." "What is the difference, Abe, if a salesman gets orders, how he gets 'em," Morris rejoined, "so long as he ain't padding his expense account?" "What d'ye mean, padding my expense account?" Abe cried. "A hundred and twenty-five dollars the fiddle costed me and that's all I charge up." "The fiddle!" Morris exclaimed. "What fiddle?" "The fiddle which I give Geigermann last night," Abe continued; "and if you don't believe me you could ask Shellak."