was at this point that Max threw diplomacy to the winds. 

 "Got you to bring us a bookkeeper!" he exclaimed. "Why, Aaron, I ain't said a word about getting us this here—now—Fillup for a bookkeeper. We already hired it a bookkeeper." 

 "What?" Aaron cried. "Do you mean to say you got the nerve to sit there and tell me you ain't asked me I should bring you a bookkeeper?" 

 "Why, Aaron," Sam interrupted with a withering glance at his partner. "I ain't saying nothing one way or the other, y'understand, but I don't think Max could of asked you because, only this morning, Aaron, Max and me was talking about this here, now—what's-his-name—and we was saying that nowadays what future was there for a young feller as a bookkeeper? Ain't it? I says to Max distinctively: 'If Aaron would bring us his nephew we would give him a job on stock. Then the first thing you know the boy gets to be a salesman and could make his five thousand dollars a year.' But what could a bookkeeper expect to be? Ain't it? At the most he makes thirty dollars a week, and there he sticks." 

 "Is that so?" Aaron retorted ironically. "Well, look at Louis Sen. I suppose Louis sticks at thirty a week, hey?" 

 "Louis Sen is something else again," Sam replied. "Louis Sen is a crook, Aaron, not a bookkeeper. That feller comes into our place two years ago, and he ain't got five cents in his clothes, and we thought we was doing him a charity when we hired him. It reminds you of the feller which picks up a frozen snake and puts it in his pants-pocket to get warm, and the first thing you know, Aaron, the snake wakes up, and bites the feller in the leg. Well, that's the way it was with Louis Sen. Gratitude is something which the feller don't understand at all. But you take this here nephew of yours, and he comes from decent, respectable people, y'understand. There's a young feller, Aaron, what we could trust, Aaron, and so when he comes to work by us on stock, Aaron, we give him a show he should learn all about the business, and you take it from me, Aaron, if the boy ain't going out on the road to sell goods for us in less than two years he ain't as smart as his uncle is, and that's all I can say." 

 Aaron smiled, and Sam looked triumphantly at his partner. 

 "All right, Sam," Aaron commented, "I see you got the boy's interest at heart. So I would bring the boy down here on Monday morning. And now, Max, let's get to work on them misses' Norfolk suits. I want eight of them blue serges." 

 Prev. P 7/208 next