"Well, Abe," he said, "you've been making a hog of yourself again. Ain't
it? Sol Klinger says he seen you over to the Harlem Winter Garden, and I
suppose you bought it such a fine supper you couldn't sleep a wink all
night. What?"
Abe started to draw himself up to his full five feet three, but lumbago
brooks no hauteur, and he subsided into the nearest chair with a low,
expressive "Oo-ee!"
"That's a heart you got it, Mawruss," he declared bitterly, "like a
stone. I drunk it nothing but lithia water and some dry toast, which
them suckers got the nerve to charge me fifty cents for."
"Well, why don't you seen it a doctor, Abe?" Morris said. "You could
monkey with yourself a whole lifetime, Abe, and it would never do you no
good; whilst if you seen it a doctor, Abe, he gives you a little pinch
of powder, y'understand, and in five minutes you are a well man."
Abe sighed heavily.
"It don't go so quick, Mawruss," he replied. "I seen a doctor this
morning and he says I am full from rheumatism. I dassen't do nothing,
Mawruss, I dassen't touch coffee or schnapps. I dassen't eat no meat but
lamb chops and chicken."
"I tasted worser things already as lamb chops and chicken, Abe," Morris
retorted.
"And the worstest thing of all, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "the doctor
says he wouldn't be responsible for my life already if I go out on
the road."
"What?" Morris exclaimed. In less than two weeks Abe was due to leave
on his Western trip, and for the past few days Morris had been in the
throes of preparing the sample line.
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