owder."

Rudnik swallowed his powder.

"You says you could cook," he remarked after he had again settled
himself on his pillow. "_Tzimmus_, for instance, _und Fleisch Kugel_?"

"_Tzimmus und Fleisch Kugel_ is nothing," she declared. "I don't want
to say nothing about myself, understand me, because lots of women to
hear 'em talk you would think wonder what cooks they are, and they
couldn't even boil a potater even; _aber_ if you could eat my _gefuellte
Rinderbrust_, Mister ----"

"Rudnik," he said as he licked his moist lips, "Harris Rudnik."

"Mister Rudnik," she proceeded, "_oder_ my _Tebeches_, you would got to
admit I ain't so helpless as I look."

"You don't look so helpless," Rudnik commented; "I bet yer you could do
washing even."

"Could I?" Miss Duckman exclaimed. "Why, sometimes at the Home I am
washing from morning till night, _aber_ I ain't kicking none. It really
agrees with me, Mr. Rudnik."

Rudnik nodded. Again he closed his eyes, and had it not been that he
swallowed convulsively at intervals he would have appeared to be
sleeping. Suddenly he raised himself on his pillow.

"Do you make maybe a good cup coffee also?" he inquired.

"A good cup coffee I make in two ways," Miss Duckman answered. "The
first is----"

Rudnik waved his hand feebly.

"I'll take your word for it," he said, and again lapsed into quietude.

"D'ye know," he murmured at length, "I ain't drunk a good cup coffee in
years already?"

Miss Duckman made no answer. Indeed she dropped her sewing and passed
noiselessly out of the room, and when she returned ten minutes later
she bore on a linen-covered tray a cup of steaming, fragrant coffee.

"How was that?" Miss Duckman asked after he had emptied the cup.

Rudnik wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"All I could say is," he replied, "if your _Tzimmus_ ain't no worser as
your coffee, Miss Duckman, nobody could kick that you ain't a good
cook."

Miss Duckman's faded cheeks grew pink and she smiled happily.

"I guess you are trying to make me a compliment," she said.

"In my whole life I never made for a woman a compliment," Rudnik
declared. "I never even so much as met one I could make a compliment to
yet except you, and _mit_ you it ain't no compliment, after all. It's
the truth."

He lay back on his pillow and gazed at the ceiling for fully a quarter
of an hour, while Miss Duckman sewed away industriously.

"After all," he said at last, "why not? Older men a