"Oh, I'm afraid I can't go. I look so mussy. Haven't
had time to brush up."

"Brush up!" scoffed Blackie, "the only thing about you that will need
brushin' up is your German. I was goin' t' warn you to rumple up your
hair a little so you wouldn't feel overdressed w'en you got there. Come
on, girl."

And so I came. And oh, I'm so glad I came!

I must have passed it a dozen times without once noticing it--just a
dingy little black shop nestling between two taller buildings, almost
within the shadow of the city hall. Over the sidewalk swung a shabby
black sign with gilt letters that spelled, "Franz Baumbach."

Blackie waved an introductory hand in the direction of the sign. "There
he is. That's all you'll ever see of him."

"Dead?" asked I, regretfully, as we entered the narrow doorway.

"No; down in the basement baking Kaffeekuchen."

Two tiny show-windows faced the street--such queer, old-fashioned
windows in these days of plate glass. At the back they were quite
open to the shop, and in one of them reposed a huge, white, immovable
structure--a majestic, heavy, nutty, surely indigestible birthday cake.
Around its edge were flutings and scrolls of white icing, and on its
broad breast reposed cherries, and stout butterflies of jelly, and
cunning traceries of colored sugar. It was quite the dressiest cake I
had ever beheld. Surely no human hand could be wanton enough to guide
a knife through all that magnificence. But in the center of all
this splendor was an inscription in heavy white letters of icing:
"Charlottens Geburtstag."

Reluctantly I tore my gaze from this imposing example of the German
confectioner's art, for Blackie was tugging impatiently at my sleeve.

"But Blackie," I marveled, "do you honestly suppose that that structure
is intended for some Charlotte's birthday?"

"In Milwaukee," explained Blackie, "w'en you got a birthday you got t'
have a geburtstag cake, with your name on it, and all the cousins and
aunts and members of the North Side Frauen Turner Verein Gesellchaft, in
for the day. It ain't considered decent if you don't. Are you ready to
fight your way into the main tent?"

It was holiday time, and the single narrow aisle of the front shop was
crowded. It was not easy to elbow one's way through the packed little
space. Men and women were ordering recklessly of the cakes of every
description that were heaped in cases and on shelves.

Cakes! What a pale; dry name to apply to those crumbli