s?"

"Sure, I know, Belz; _aber_ one or two of 'em ain't widders. One or two
of 'em is old maids and they would got to go and live back with their
relations. Especially"--he concluded with a twinkle in his
eye--"especially one of 'em by the name Blooma Duckman."

"Do you mean to told me," Belz faltered, "that them now--widders is in
the Bella Hirshkind Home?"

"For Indignant Females," Lesengeld added, "which Max Schindelberger is
president from it also."

Belz nodded and remained silent for at least five minutes.

"I'll tell you, Lesengeld," he said at last, "after all it's a hard
thing a woman should be left a widder."

"You bet your life it's a hard thing, Belz!" Lesengeld agreed
fervently. "Last week I seen it a woman she is kissing her husband
good-bye, and the baby also kisses him good-bye--decent, respectable,
hard-working people, understand me--and not two minutes later he gets
run down by a trollyer car. The next week they take away from her the
furniture, understand me, and she puts the baby into a day nursery, and
what happens after that I didn't wait to see at all. Cost me ten cents
yet in a drug store for some mathematic spirits of ammonia for Mrs.
Lesengeld--she carries on so terrible about it."

Belz sighed tremulously.

"All right, Lesengeld," he said; "write Rudnik we would extend the
mortgage and he should call here to-morrow."

* * * * *

"If I got to lose the house I got to lose it," Harris Rudnik declared
as he sat in B. Lesengeld's revolving chair on the following morning.
"I ain't got long to live anyhow."

He tucked his hands into his coat-pocket and glared balefully at
Schindelberger, who shrugged his shoulders.

"That's the way he is talking right along," he said. "Did you ever hear
the like? Mind you, it ain't that he's got anybody he should leave the
house to, Mr. Belz, but he ain't got no use for women."

"What d'ye mean, I ain't got no use for women?" Rudnik cried. "I got
just so much use for women as you got it, _aber_ not for a lot of women
which all their lives men make suckers of themselves working their
heads off they should keep 'em in luxury, understand me, and then the
men dies, y'understand, right away the widders is put in homes and
other men which ain't related to 'em at all must got to leave 'em their
hard-earned _Geld_, Mr. Belz, so they could sit with their hands folded
doing nothing."

"What are you talking nonsense do