Two weeks
elapsed, however, and one evening, on Lenox Avenue, she encountered
Emanuel, freed from the chrysalis of his employment, a natty,
lavender-trousered butterfly of fashion. Thereafter she called him
Mannie, and during business hours she flashed upon him those same black
eyes with results disastrous to the shipping end of Potash &
Perlmutter's business.
Packages intended for the afternoon delivery of a local express company
arrived in Florida two weeks later, while the irate buyer of a Jersey
City store, who impatiently awaited an emergency shipment of ten heavy
winter garments, received instead half a hundred gossamer wraps designed
for the sub-tropical weather of Palm Beach.
"I don't know what's come over that fellow, Mawruss," Abe said at last.
"Formerly he was a crackerjack--never made no mistakes nor nothing; and
now I dassen't trust him at all, Mawruss. Everything we ship I got to
look after it myself, Mawruss. We might as well have no shipping clerk
at all."
"You're right, Abe," Morris replied. "He gets carelesser every day. And
why, Abe? Because of that Miss Kreitmann. She breaks us all up, Abe. I
bet yer if that feller Gubin has took her to the theayter once, Abe, he
took her fifty times already. He spends every cent he makes on her, and
the first thing you know, Abe, we'll be missing a couple of pieces of
silk from the cutting-room. Ain't it?"
"He ain't no thief, Mawruss," said Abe, "and, besides, you can't blame a
young feller if he gets stuck on a nice girl like Miss Kreitmann,
Mawruss.
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