The Competitive Nephew. Glass Montague

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she is a cracker-jack, A Number One bookkeeper."

      "Did I say she wasn't?" Aaron replied. "I am only saying she acts to me very funny, Max. She gives me this here bottle of medicine just now."

      He poked the package at Max, who handled it gingerly, as though it might explode at any minute.

      "What d'ye give it to me for?" he cried. "I don't want it."

      "Well, I don't want it, neither," Aaron replied. "She ain't got no right to act fresh like that and give me medicine which I ain't asked for at all."

      He looked exceedingly hurt and voiced his indignation with a tremendous whoop, the forerunner of a dozen minor whoops which shaded off into a succession of wheezes. It seemed to Max and Sam that Aaron would never succeed in catching his breath, and just when he appeared to be at his ultimate gasp Miss Meyerson ran up with a tablespoon. She snatched the bottle from Max's grasp and, tearing off the wrapping paper, she drew the cork and poured a generous dose.

      "Take this right now," she commanded, pressing the spoon to Aaron's lips. With a despairing glance at Max he swallowed the medicine, and immediately afterward made a horrible grimace.

      "T'phooee!" he cried. "What the – what are you trying to do – poison me?"

      "That won't poison you," Miss Meyerson declared. "It'll do you good. All he needs is about six more doses, Mr. Fatkin, and he'd be rid of that cough in no time."

      Max nodded.

      "Miss Meyerson is right, Aaron," he said. "You ought to take care of yourself."

      Aaron wiped his eyes and his moustache with his handkerchief.

      "You ain't got maybe a little schnapps in your desk, Max?" he said.

      "Schnapps is the worst thing you could take, Mr. Pinsky," Miss Meyerson cried. "Don't give him any, Mr. Fatkin; it'll only make him worse."

      She shook her head warningly at Aaron as she and Sam walked back to the office.

      "What d'ye think for a fresh woman like that?" he said to Max as Miss Meyerson's head once more bent over her books.

      "She ain't fresh, Aaron," Max replied. "She's just got a heart, y'understand."

      "But – " Aaron began.

      "But nothing, Aaron," Max broke in. "I will wrap up the medicine and you will take it home with you. The girl knows what she is talking about, Aaron, and the best thing for you to do is to leave off schnapps a little while and do what she says you should. I see on the bottle it's from Doctor Goldenreich. He's a specialitist from the chest and lungs, and I bet yer if you would go to him he would soak you ten dollars yet."

      No argument could have appealed so strongly to Aaron as this did, and he thrust the bottle into his breast-pocket without another word.

      "And how is Fillup coming on?" he asked.

      "We couldn't complain," Max replied. "The boy is a good boy, Aaron. He is learning our line like he would be with us six months already."

      "That's good," Aaron commented. "I bet yer before he would be here a month yet he would know the line as good as Sam and you."

      Max smiled.

      "I says the boy is a good boy, Aaron," he said, "but I never says he was a miracle, y'understand."

      "That ain't no miracle, Max," Aaron retorted. "That's a prophecy."

      Max smiled again, but the prediction more than justified itself in less than a month, for at the end of that time Philip knew the style-number and price of every garment in Zaretsky & Fatkin's line.

      "I never see nothing like it, Sam," Max said. "The boy is a human catalogue. You couldn't stump him on nothing."

      "Sure, I know," Sam replied. "Sometimes I got to think we make a mistake in letting that boy know all our business."

      "A mistake!" Max repeated. "What d'ye mean a mistake?"

      "I mean, Max, that the first thing you know Aaron goes around blowing to our competitors how well that boy is doing here, Max, and then a concern like Sammet Brothers or Klinger & Klein would offer the boy seven dollars a week, and some fine day we'll come downtown and find that Fillup's got another job. Also the feller what hires him would have a human catalogue of our whole line, prices and style-numbers complete."

      "Always you are looking for trouble, Sam," Max cried.

      "Looking for it I ain't, Max. I don't got to look for it, because when a feller got it a competitor like Greenberg & Sen, Max, he could find trouble without looking for it. Them suckers was eating lunch in Wasserbauer's on Monday when Aaron goes in there with Fillup. Elenbogen, of Plotkin & Elenbogen, seen the whole thing, Max, and he told it me this morning in the subway to make me feel bad. Sometimes without meaning it at all a feller could do you a big favour when he tells you something for spite. Ain't it?"

      "What did he tell you?" Max asked.

      "He says that Greenberg & Sen goes over to Aaron's table and the first thing you know a box of cigars is going around and Fillup is drinking a bottle of celery tonic. Elenbogen says you would think Aaron was nobody, because them two fellers ain't paid no attentions to him at all. Everything was Fillup. They made a big holler about the boy, Max, and they asks Elenbogen to lend 'em his fountain pen so the boy could make it birds on the back of the bill-off-fare. Elenbogen says his fountain pen was put out of business ever since. Also, Sen insists on taking the bill-off-fare away with him, and Elenbogen says Aaron feels so set up about it he thought he would spit blood yet, the way he coughs."

      "That's a couple of foxy young fellers," Max said. "You could easy get around a feller like Aaron Pinsky, Sam. He's a soft proposition."

      Sam nodded and was about to voice another criticism of Aaron much less complimentary in character, when the elevator door clanged and Aaron himself entered the showroom.

      "Well, boys," he said, "looks like we would get an early spring. Here it is only February already and I feel it that the winter is pretty near over. I could always tell by my throat what the weather is going to be. My cough lets up on me something wonderful, and with me that's always what you would call a sign of spring."

      "Might it's a sign that Miss Meyerson's medicine done you good, maybe," Max commented.

      "Well, certainly it ain't done me no harm," Aaron said. "I took six bottles already, and though it ain't the tastiest thing in the world, y'understand, it loosens up the chest something wonderful."

      He slapped himself in the region of the diaphragm and sat down deliberately.

      "However," he began, "I ain't come to talk to you about myself. I got something else to say."

      He paused impressively, while Max and Sam exchanged mournful glances.

      "I come to talk to you about Fillup," he continued. "There's a boy which he got it ability, y'understand. Five dollars a week is nothing for a boy like that."

      "Ain't it?" Max retorted. "Where could you find it a boy which is only six weeks in his first job and gets more, Aaron?"

      Aaron waved his hand deprecatingly.

      "I don't got to go very far away from here, Max," he said, "to find a concern which would СКАЧАТЬ