twenty-four hours of abstainment, with coffee and freshly-
baked coffee cake of every variety. It was a lead-pipe blow
at one's digestion, but delicious beyond imagining. Bella's
mother was a famous cook, and her two maids followed in the
ways of their mistress. There were to be sisters and
brothers and out-of-town relations as guests at the evening
meal, and Mrs. Weinberg had outdone herself.

"Oh!" exclaimed Fanny in a sort of agony and delight.

"Take some," said Bella, the temptress.

The pantry was fragrant as a garden with spices, and fruit
scents, and the melting, delectable perfume of brown,
freshly-baked dough, sugar-coated. There was one giant
platter devoted wholly to round, plump cakes, with puffy
edges, in the center of each a sunken pool that was all
plum, bearing on its bosom a snowy sifting of powdered
sugar. There were others whose centers were apricot, pure
molten gold in the sunlight. There were speckled expanses
of cheese kuchen, the golden-brown surface showing rich
cracks through which one caught glimpses of the lemon-yellow
cheese beneath--cottage cheese that had been beaten up with
eggs, and spices, and sugar, and lemon. Flaky crust rose,
jaggedly, above this plateau. There were cakes with jelly,
and cinnamon kuchen, and cunning cakes with almond slices
nestling side by side. And there was freshly-baked bread--
twisted loaf, with poppy seed freckling its braid, and its
sides glistening with the butter that had been liberally
swabbed on it before it had been thrust into the oven.