"This is Mrs. Lubliner, Mr. Scharley," Mrs. Lesengeld said.
"Don't make no difference, Mrs. Lesengeld," Scharley assured 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 Stück," 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 scraped 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 Japanese 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.