"I hope he chokes," he said; but even though at that very moment Samuel Gembitz sat in Hammersmith's restaurant, his cheeks distended to the bursting point with gefüllte Rinderbrust, Lester's prayer went unanswered. Indeed, Samuel Gembitz had the bolting capacity of a boa-constrictor, and, with the aid of a gulp of coffee, he could have swallowed a grapefruit whole.
"Ain't you scared that you would sometimes hurt your di-gestion, Mr. Gembitz?" asked Henry Schrimm, who sat at the next table.
Now this was a sore point with Sam Gembitz, for during the past year he had succumbed to more than a dozen bilious attacks as a result of his voracious appetite; and three of them were directly traceable to gefüllte Rinderbrust.
"I ain't so delicate like some people, Henry," he said rather sharply. "I don't got to consider every bit of meat which I am putting in my mouth. And even if I would, Henry, what is doctors for? If a feller would got to deny himself plain food, Henry, he might as well jump off a dock and fertig."
Henry Schrimm was an active member of as many fraternal orders as there are evenings in the week, and he possessed a ready sympathy that made him invaluable as a chairman of a sick-visiting or funeral committee; for at seven P.M. Henry could bring himself to the verge of tears over the bedside of a lodge brother, without unduly affecting his ability to relish a game of auction pinochle at half-past eight, sharp.
"Jumping off a dock is all right, too, Mr. Gembitz," he commented, "but you got your family to consider."
"You shouldn't worry about my family, Henry," Gembitz retorted. "I am carrying good insurance; and, furthermore, I got my business in such shape that it would go on just the same supposing I should die to-morrow."
"Gott soll hüten, Mr. Gembitz," Henry added piously as the old man disposed of a dishful of gravy through the capillary attraction of a hunk of spongy rye bread.
"Yes, Henry," Gembitz continued, after he had licked his fingers and submitted his bicuspids to a process of vacuum cleaning, "I got my business down to such a fine point which you could really say was systematic."
"That's a good thing, Mr. Gembitz," Henry said, "because, presuming for the sake of argument, I am only saying you would be called away, Mr. Gembitz, them boys of yours would run it into the ground in no time."