want before you go back w'ere th' tables are. Don't
fumble this thing. When Olga or Minna comes waddlin' up
t' you an' says: `Nu, Fraulein?' you gotta tell her
whether your heart says plum-kuchen oder Nusstorte, or
both, see? Just like that. Now make up your mind. I'd
hate t' have you blunder. Have you decided?"

"Decided! How can I?" I moaned, watching a
black-haired, black-eyed Alsatian girl behind the counter
as she rolled a piece of white paper into a cone and
dipped a spoonful of whipped cream from a great brown
bowl heaped high with the snowy stuff. She filled the
paper cone, inserted the point of it into one end of a
hollow pastry horn, and gently squeezed. Presto! A
cream-filled Hornchen!

"Oh, Blackie!" I gasped. "Come on. I want to go in
and eat."

As we elbowed our way to the rear room separated from
the front shop only by a flimsy wooden partition, I
expected I know not what.

But surely this was not Blackie's much-vaunted
Baumbach's! This long, narrow, dingy room, with its bare
floor and its iron-legged tables whose bare marble tops
were yellow with age and use! I said nothing as we
seated ourselves. Blackie was watching me out of the
tail of his eye. My glance wandered about the shabby,
smoke-filled room, and slowly and surely the charm of