"Forty years ago come next _Shevuos_ I ain't tasted it already," he concluded.

Mrs. Lesengeld coloured slightly and clutched at her ap.r.o.n in an agony of embarra.s.sment.

"The fact is we only got three knives and forks," she said, "otherwise there is plenty fish for everybody."

"Why, we just had our lunch at the hotel before we started," Mr.

Williams said.

"_You_ did," Scharley corrected him reproachfully, "_aber_ I ain't hardly touched a thing since last night. That shaving-dish party pretty near killed me, already."

"Well, then, we got just enough knives and forks," Mrs. Lesengeld cried.

"Do you like maybe also _Bortch_, Mr. Scharley?"

"_Bortch!_" Mr. Scharley exclaimed, and his voice trembled with excitement. "Do you mean a sort of soup _mit_ beets and--and--all that?"

"That's it," Mrs. Lesengeld replied, and Scharley nodded his head slowly.

"Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, "would you believe me, it's so long since I tasted that stuff I didn't remember such a thing exists even."

"And do you like it?" Mrs. Lesengeld repeated.

"Do I _like_ it!" Scharley cried. "_Um Gottes Willen_, Mrs. Lesengeld, I _love_ it."

"Then sit right down," she said heartily. "Everything is ready."

"If you don't mind, Mr. Scharley," Williams interrupted, "I'll wait for you at the office of the company. It's only a couple of hundred yards down the beach."

"Go as far as you like, Mr. Williams," Scharley said as he tucked a napkin between his collar and chin. "I'll be there when I get through."

After Mrs. Lesengeld had ushered out Mr. Williams, she proceeded to the door of the rear room and knocked vigorously.

"Don't be foolish, Yetta, and come on out," she called. "It ain't n.o.body but an old friend of my husband's."

A moment later Yetta entered the room, and Scharley scrambled to his feet, a knife grasped firmly in one hand, and bobbed his head cordially.

"Pleased to meetcher," he said.

"This is Mrs. Lubliner, Mr. Scharley," Mrs. Lesengeld said.

"Don't make no difference, Mrs. Lesengeld," Scharley a.s.sured her, "any friend of yours is a friend of mine, so you should sit right down, Mrs.

Lubliner, on account we are all ready to begin."

Then followed a moment of breathless silence while Mrs. Lesengeld dished up the beetroot soup, and when she placed a steaming bowlful in front of Scharley he immediately plunged his spoon into it. A moment later he lifted his eyes to the ceiling.

"Oo-ee!" he exclaimed. "What an elegant soup!"

Mrs. Lesengeld blushed, and after the fashion of a _cordon bleu_ the world over, she began to decry her own handiwork.

"It should ought to got just a _Bisschen_ more pepper into it," she murmured.

"_Oser a Stuck_," Scharley declared solemnly, as he consumed the contents of his bowl in great gurgling inhalations. "There's only one thing I got to say against it."

He sc.r.a.ped his bowl clean and handed it to Mrs. Lesengeld.

"And that is," he concluded, "that it makes me eat so much of it, understand me, I'm scared I wouldn't got no room for the brown stewed fish."

Again he emptied the bowl, and at last the moment arrived when the brown stewed fish smoked upon the table. Mrs. Lesengeld helped Scharley to a heaping plateful, and both she and Yetta watched him intently, as with the deftness of a j.a.panese juggler he balanced approximately a half pound of the succulent fish on the end of his fork. For nearly a minute he blew on it, and when it reached an edible temperature he opened wide his mouth and thrust the fork load home. Slowly and with great smacking of his moist lips he chewed away, and then his eyes closed and he laid down his knife and fork.

"_Gan-eden!_" he declared as he reached across the table and shook hands with Mrs. Lesengeld.

"Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, "my mother _olav hasholom_ was a good _cook_, understand me, _aber_ you are a _good cook_, Mrs. Lesengeld, and that's all there is to it."

Forthwith he resumed his knife and fork, and with only two pauses for the necessary replenishments, he polished off three platefuls of the fish, after which he heaved a great sigh of contentment, and as a prelude to conversation he lit one of B. Gans' choicest cigars.

"There's some dessert coming," Mrs. Lesengeld said.

"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 a.s.sailed 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.