"Dessert after this, Mrs. Lesengeld," he replied, through clouds of
contented smoke, "would be a sacrilege, ain't it?"

"That's something I couldn't make at all," Mrs. Lesengeld admitted. "All
I got it here is some _frimsel kugel_."

"_Frimsel kugel!_" Scharley exclaimed, laying down his cigar. "Why ain't
you told me that before?"

A quarter of an hour later he again lighted his cigar, and this time he
settled back in his campstool for conversation, while Mrs. Lesengeld
busied herself about the oil stove. Instantly, however, he straightened
up as another and more delicious odour assailed his nostrils, for Mrs.
Lesengeld made coffee by a mysterious process, that conserved in the
flavour of the decoction the delicious fragrance of the freshly ground
bean.

"And are you staying down here with Mrs. Lesengeld?" Scharley asked
Yetta after he had finished his third cup.

"In this little place here?" Mrs. Lesengeld cried indignantly. "Well, I
should say not. She's stopping at the Salisbury, ain't you, Yetta?"

Yetta nodded and sighed.

"It ain't so comfortable as here," she said.

"I bet yer," Scharley added fervently. "I am stopping there too, and
them Chinese Lantern Dinners which they are putting up!"

He waved his hand eloquently.

"Poison ain't no word for it, Missus Er----" he concluded lamely as he
tried to remember Yetta's name, which after so much soup, fish and
coffee had completely escaped him.

"Lubliner," Yetta said. "I guess you know my husband, Mr. Scharley,
Elkan Lubliner of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company."

Scharley struck the table with his open hand.

"Zoitenly, I do," he cried. "Why, he is the feller which Sol Klinger is
telling me about."

Yetta coloured slightly and bit her lips.

"What did he tell you about him?" she asked.

"Why," Scharley said, drawing vigorously on his imagination, "he says to
me what a bright young feller he is and----"

Here he reflected that in a highly competitive trade like the cloak and
suit business this statement sounded a trifle exaggerated.

"And," he went on hurriedly, "he told me how he saw you and him with
Mrs. Lesengeld up at the hotel the other evening, and I says, 'What,' I
says, 'you don't mean Mrs. Lesengeld whose husband used to was in the
pants business?' and he said he didn't know, 'because,' I says, 'if
that's the same party,' I says, 'I would like for her to come up to the
hotel and take dinner with me some time,' I says."

He smiled c