us. I think I told you about her before--Miss
Blooma Duckman. Nothing suits that woman at all. The way she acts you
would think she lives in the bridal soot at the Waldorfer, and she gets
my wife so mad, understand me, that she throws away a whole dish of
_Tzimmus_ in the garbage can already--which I got to admit that the
woman is right, Lesengeld--my wife don't make the finest _Tzimmus_ in
the world."

"Suppose she don't," Lesengeld commented. "Ain't it better she should
spoil some _Tzimmus_ which all it's got into it is carrots, potatoes,
and a little chuck? If it would be that she makes a failure _mit Gaense
oder_ chickens which it really costs money, understand me, then you got
a right to kick."

"That's what I says," Belz replied, "_aber_ that Miss Duckman takes
everything so particular. She kicks about it all the way up in the
subway, which the next time I get one of my wife's relations in a Home,
either it would be so far away she couldn't come to see us at all, or
it would be so nearby that I don't got to lose a night's rest seeing
her home. I didn't get to bed till pretty near two o'clock."

He stifled a yawn as he sat down at his desk.

"All the same, Lesengeld," he added, "they certainly got a nice place
up there for old women. There's lots of respectable business men pays
ten dollars a week for their wives in the Catskills already which they
don't got it so comfortable. Ain't it a shame, Lesengeld, that with a
charity like that which is really a charity, people don't support it
better as they do?"

"I bet yer!" Lesengeld cried. "The way some people acts not only they
ain't got no hearts, y'understand, but they ain't got no sense,
neither. I seen a case yesterday where an old _Rosher_ actually refuses
to pay a month's rent for his son's widder _mit_ a little boy, to save
'em being put out on the sidewalk. Afterward he goes broke, understand
me, and when the boy grows up he's got the nerve to make a touch from
him a couple of dollars and the boy goes to work and gives it to him.
If I would be the boy the old man could starve to death; I wouldn't
give him not one cent. They call us sharks, Belz, but compared with
such a _Haman_ we ain't even sardines."

"Sure, I know," Belz said as he consulted the firm's diary; "and if you
wouldn't waste your time going on so many moving pictures, Lesengeld,
might you would attend to business maybe. Yesterday was ten days that
feller Rudnik's mortgage is past due, and