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----"