"All right, Felix," he grumbled; "maybe you think it is a joke, but just the same I am telling you I paid for that fiddle only two hundred dollars." Felix stopped laughing and wiped his eyes. "Well, I'm sorry, Abe," he said seriously. "A feller should never look a gift horse in the teeth, Abe; but that fiddle ain't worth a cent more than a hundred at the outside." "Do you mean to say it ain't a genu-ine Amati?" Abe asked angrily. "Why, I don't mean to say anything, Abe," Felix began; "but there are Amatis and Amatis. Some of them are worth little fortunes and others are very ordinary-like." "Say, lookyhere, Felix," Abe cried, "don't fool with me. Either that fiddle is or it ain't a genu-ine Amati. Ain't it?" Felix paused. He wanted those velvet suits badly, and it began to look as though there would be a delay in the shipment. "What is all this leading to, Abe?" he began pleasantly. "If there's anything troubling you speak right up and I'll try to straighten it out." Abe shifted his cigar in his mouth and made the plunge. "What is the use beating bushes around, Felix?" he said. "Yesterday I am giving you a fiddle, ain't it? Inside it says the fiddle is a genu-ine Amati. What? _Schon gut_ if that fiddle is a genu-ine Amati it is worth three thousand dollars, ain't it? Because if it ain't, then you are stuck with the other fiddle which you bought it. And if it is worth three thousand, then we are stuck by giving you the fiddle, ain't it? So that's the way it goes." Felix nodded. It was a delicate situation, in which his credit and the shipment of the suits seemed to be imperilled. To declare flatly that Abe's gift was a bogus Amati might offend him seriously, while to admit that it was genuine, but only worth one hundred dollars, was to foster Abe's notion that he, Felix, had wasted three thousand dollars on a similar violin. "I want to tell you something, Abe," he began at last. "There's nothing to this business of selling goods by making presents, and I for one don't believe in it. So I'll tell you what I'll do. Come up here to the store to-morrow morning, and I'll get the fiddle from my house and give it back to you." Abe's scowl merged immediately into a wide grin. "I don't want the fiddle back, Felix," he said, "but my partner, y'understand, he is the one which is always----" "Say no more, Abe," Felix cried. "All I want is you should ship that order; and tell your partner, if he is scared I am spending my money foolishly, he can have a new statement whenever he wants it; and I'll swear to it on a truckload of Bibles." When Abe returned to his place of business that afternoon he expected to find Morris pacing up and down the showroom floor, the picture of distracted anxiety. Instead he was humming a cheerful melody as he piled up two-piece velvet suits. "Well, Abe," he said, "you have went on a fool's errand, ain't it?" "What d'ye mean, fool's errand?" Abe demanded.