there ain't no law compelling you to keep it, you understand. Send it
back. My Rosie can use it. Maybe we ain't so stylish like your Minnie,
Mawruss; but if we don't have bumbums every day, we could put dill
pickles into it!"

"One moment," Morris protested. "I ain't saying anything about that
bumbum dish, Abe. All I meant that if you give _me_ such a high-price
present when _I_ get married, that's all the more reason why we should
give a high-price present to a customer what we will make money on. I
ain't no customer, Abe."

"I know you ain't," said Abe. "You're only a partner, and I don't make
no money on you, neither."

Morris shrugged his shoulders.

"What's the use of wasting more time about it, Abe?" he said. "Go ahead
and buy a present."

"Me buy it?" Abe cried. "You know yourself, Mawruss, I ain't a success
with presents. You draw the check and get your Minnie to buy it. She's
an up-to-date woman, Mawruss, while my Rosie is a back number. She don't
know nothing but to keep a good house, Mawruss. Sterling silver bumbum
dishes she don't know, Mawruss. If I took her advice, you wouldn't got
no bumbum dish. Nut-picks, Mawruss, from the five-and-ten-cent store,
that's what you'd got. You might appreciate them, Mawruss; but a
sterling silver----"

At this juncture Morris took refuge in the outer office, where Miss
Cohen, the bookkeeper, was taking off her wraps.