"'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent table-d'hôte lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no appetite. How many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that poison?'
"'So sure as I am sitting here, mommer,' Hoover says, 'all I had for my lunch was a Swiss-cheese rye-bread sandwich and a cup coffee.'
"'Then what's the matter you ain't eating?' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Ain't it cooked right?'
"'Certainly it's cooked right,' Hoover says. 'But two pieces is a plenty on account of the war.'
"'On account of the war! I could work my fingers to the bone fixing good food for that man, and he wouldn't eat it on account of the war, _sagt er_,' says Mrs. Hoover.
"'But, listen, mommer--' Hoover tries to tell her.
"'Never mind, any excuse is better than none,' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Turns up his nose at my cooking yet! _Gestoffte Miltz_ ain't good _enough_ for him. I suppose you would like me to give you every day roast duck on twenty dollars a week housekeeping money. Did you ever hear the like? Couldn't eat _gestoffte Miltz_ no more, so tony he gets all of a sudden!'
"'_Aber_ mommer, listen to me for a moment,' Hoover says, but it ain't a bit of use because Mrs. Hoover goes into the bedroom and locks the door on him, and by the time he has got her to be on speaking terms again he has violated the don't-eat-no-sugar DON'T to the extent of four dollars and fifty cents for a five-pound box of mixed chocolates and bum-bums, understand me. Also just to show that she forgives him they take in a show mit afterward a supper in which Mr. Hoover violates not only all the other DON'TS in the food-conservation circulars, but also makes himself liable to go to jail for giving a couple of dollars to a German head waiter under the Trading with the Enemy law."
"At that, the way some of our best hotels conservates food nowadays is setting a good example to the women of the country," Morris declared.
"What do you mean--nowadays?" Abe retorted. "They always conservated food, the only difference being, Mawruss, that in former times, when them crooks used to get ten portions of chicken _à la_ King out of a two-pound cold-storage chicken and charged you a dollar and a quarter a portion for it, y'understand, they was a bunch of crooks--ain't it?--whereas nowadays when them crooks get eleven portions out of the same chicken and charge you a dollar and a half a portion for it, y'understand, they're a bunch of patriots, understand me, which if the coal-dealer and the retail grocer and butcher would short-weight you and overcharge you the way some of them patriotic New York hotel proprietors does, it would be hard to find many patriots in New York City outside of Blackwells Island _oder_ the Tombs prison."