Part 25 (1/2)

Sam deemed it hardly worth while to acquiesce in this statement, but he indorsed it unconsciously with a large tear, which stole put of the corner of his eye and worked a clean groove down one travel-stained cheek.

”Have a smoke, Sam,” Morris added hastily as he thrust a cigar toward his late customer. ”Did you got your lunch yet? No? Come on out with me now and we would have a little bite to eat.”

He jumped to his feet and seized his hat.

”Nathan,” he bawled to the s.h.i.+pping clerk, ”tell Mr. Potash I am going out with a customer and I'll be back when I am here.”

Max Kirschner had reached the age of sixty without making a single enemy save his stomach, which at length ungratefully rejected all the rich favours that Max had bestowed on it so long and so generously. Indeed, he was reduced to a diet of crackers and milk when Abe encountered him in Hammersmith's restaurant that September morning.

”h.e.l.lo, Max!” Abe cried. ”When did you get back? I thought you was in one of them--now--sanatoriums.”

”A sanatorium is no place for a drummer to find a job, Abe,” Max replied.

”A good salesman like you could find a job anywhere without much trouble, Max,” Abe said cheerfully.

”That's what everybody says, Abe; meantime I'm loafing.”

”It wouldn't be for long, Max,” Abe rejoined as he cast a hungry eye over Hammersmith's bill of fare. ”How's that fillet de who's this, with asparagra.s.s tips and mushrooms?”

For a brief moment Max's eye gleamed and then grew dull again.

”It's fine to put the stomach out of business, Abe,” Max said. ”Take the tip from one who has lost sixty pounds, ten customers, and a good job all in six weeks--and order poached eggs on toast.”

Abe compromised on boiled beef with horseradish sauce; and when he was well into the noisy consumption of that simple dish he broached the subject of Max's future plans.

”When d'ye think you'll go to work again, Max?” he asked.

Max shrugged expressively.

”I'm not a prophet, Abe; I'm a salesman,” he said.

”Well, there ain't no particular hurry, Max. It ain't the same like you would got a family to look out for.”

”I've been a drummer all my life, Abe,” Max declared, ”and a drummer has no right to be married. When I was a kid I had a chance to go into the store of a couple of yokels upstate in the town where I was born and raised; and I guess if I'd done so I'd been married and had a whole family of children by now.”

”Maybe you're just as well off, Max,” Abe said consolingly. ”Children is a gamble anyhow, Max. The boys is a.s.sets and the girls is liabilities; and if you got a large family of girls you're practically bankrupt, no matter how good business would be.”

”Don't you believe it, Abe,” Max said. ”Those two yokels both had big families and they didn't do such a big business either. But they managed to make a good living, and last week I hear they sold out to some city dry goods man for forty thousand dollars.”

Abe paused with a loaded knife in midair.

”Forty thousand dollars between two ain't much, Max,” he said.

”It's more than I've got, anyhow,” Max rejoined as he rose to his feet.

”You got lots of time to make money, Max,” Abe concluded. ”Come round and see us when you get time, won't you?”

Max nodded; and as he walked down the street to make a further canva.s.s of the garment trade he pa.s.sed the broad windows of the dairy lunchroom, where Morris was regaling Sam Green with a popular-price meal.

”Yes, Sam,” Morris said as he caught sight of Max Kirschner's dejected figure, ”you're lucky when you consider some people. You are still a young man and it ain't too late for you to start in as a new beginner somewhere. A young man could always make a living anyhow.”