in this here matter on account Rudnik is an old man,
understand me, and all he's got in the world is the Clinton Street
house; and, furthermore, he will make a will leaving it to the Bella
Hirshkind Home for Indignant Females, which if you want to go ahead and
rob a lot of poor old widders of a few thousand dollars, go ahead, Mr.
Lesengeld."

He started to rise from his chair, but he thought better of it as
Lesengeld began to speak.

"Don't make me no bluffs, Schindelberger," Lesengeld cried, "because,
in the first place, if Rudnik wills his house to the Bella Hirshkind
Home, what is that my business? And, in the second place, Belz's wife's
mother's a cousin got a sister which for years, Belz, makes a standing
offer of five hundred dollars some one should marry her, and finally he
gets her into the Home as single as the day she was born already."

"One or two ain't widders," Schindelberger admitted, "but they're all
old, and when you say what is it your business that Rudnik leaves his
house to charity, sure it ain't. _Aber_ it's your business if you try
to take the house away from charity. Even if you would be dealing in
second mortgages, Mr. Lesengeld, that ain't no reason why you shouldn't
got a heart once in a while."

"What d'ye mean, I ain't got a heart?" Lesengeld demanded. "I got just
so much a heart as you got it, Mr. Schindelberger. Why, last night I
went on a moving pictures, understand me, where a little girl gets her
father he should give her mother another show, _verstehst du_, and I
assure you I cried like a baby, such a soft heart I got it." He had
risen from his chair and was pacing excitedly up and down the little
room. "The dirty dawg wants to put her out of the house already on
account she is kissing her brother which he is just come home from
twenty years on the Pacific Coast," he continued; "and people calls me
a shark yet, Mr. Schindelberger, which my wife and me is married
twenty-five years next _Succos Halamode_ and never so much as an
unkind breath between us."

"That's all right, Mr. Lesengeld," Schindelberger said. "I don't doubt
your word for a minute, but when it comes to foreclosing a mortgage on
a house which it, so to speak, belongs to a home for poor widders and a
couple of old maids, understand me, then that's something else again."

"Who says I'm going to foreclose the mortgage?" Lesengeld demanded.

"You didn't said you was going to foreclose it," Schindelberger
replied, "but