"_Aber_ you take a piece of tenderloin steak a half an inch thick and about the size of a price ticket, understand me," Scharley interrupted, "and even if you _would_ fix it up with half a cent's worth of peas and spill on it a bottle cough medicine and glue, _verstehst du mich_, how could you make it figure up more as a dollar and a quarter, Mr. Williams? Then the clams, Mr. Williams, must got to have inside of 'em at the very least a half a karat pink pearl in 'em, otherwise thirty-five cents would be big yet."
"Very likely," Mr. Williams agreed as a shade of annoyance passed over his well modelled features, "but just now, Mr. Scharley, I'm anxious to show you the advantage of these lots of ours, and you won't mind if I don't pursue the topic of Chinese Lantern Dinners any farther."
"I'm only too glad not to talk about it at all," Scharley agreed. "In fact if any one else tries to ring in another one of them dinners on me, Mr. Williams, I'll turn him down on the spot. Shaving-dish parties neither, which I assure you, Mr. Williams, even if Miss Feldman would be an elegant, refined young lady, understand me, she fixes something in that shaving dish of hers last night, understand me, which I thought I was poisoned already."
Williams deemed it best to ignore this observation and therefore made no comment.
"But anyhow," Scharley concluded as they approached a little wooden shack on the margin of the water, "I'm sick and tired of things to eat, so let's talk about something else."
Having delivered this ultimatum, his footsteps lagged and he stopped short as he began to sniff the air like a hunting dog.
"M-m-m-m!" he exclaimed. "What _is_ that?"
"That's a two-room shed we rent for twenty dollars a month," Williams explained. "We have eight of them and they help considerably to pay our office rent over in New York."
"Sure I know," Scharley agreed, "_aber_, m-m-m-m!"
Once more he expanded his nostrils to catch a delicious fragrance that emanated from the little shack.
"_Aber_, who lives there?" he insisted, and Mr. Williams could not restrain a laugh.
"Why, it's that old lady with the wig that Lubliner brought over to the hotel the other night," he replied. "I thought I saw Sol Klinger telling you about it yesterday."