And in the same way he now spoke to her.
“You’re looking nice!” he said. “You’re looking pretty!” He kept smiling vulturesquely at her and stroking her arm. “Just like a rose she is!” the old man said, and never took his weary eyes from her face.
“Oh, Jake!” she cried excitedly and in a surprised tone, as if she had not known before that he was there. “How nice of you to come! I didn’t know you were back. I thought you were still in Europe.”
“I’ve been and went,” he declared humorously.
“You’re looking awfully well, Jake,” she said. “The trip did you lots of good. You’ve lost weight. You took the cure at Carlsbad, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t take the cure,” the old man solemnly declared, “I took the die-ett.” Deliberately he mispronounced the word.
Instantly Mrs. Jack’s face was suffused with crimson and her shoulders began to shake hysterically. She turned to Roberta Heilprinn, seized her helplessly by the arm, and clung to her, shrieking faintly:
“God! Did you hear him? He’s been on a diet! I bet it almost killed him! The way he loves to eat!”
Miss Heilprinn chuckled fruitily and her oil-smooth features widened in such a large grin that her eyes contracted to closed slits.
“I’ve been die-etting ever since I went away,” said Jake. “I was sick when I went away—and I came back on an English boat,” the old man said with a melancholy and significant leer that drew a scream of laughter from the two women.
“Oh, Jake!” cried Mrs. Jack hilariously. “How you must have suffered! I know what you used to think of English food!”
“I think the same as I always did,” the old man said with resigned sadness—“only ten times more!”
She shrieked again, then gasped out, “Brussels sprouts?”
“They still got ‘em,” said old Jake solemnly. “They still got the same ones they had ten years ago. I saw Brussels sprouts this last trip that ought to be in the British Museum…And they still got that good fish,” he went on with a suggestive leer.
Roberta Heilprinn, her bland features grinning like a Buddha, gurgled: “The Dead Sea fruit?”
“No,” said old Jake sadly, “not the Dead Sea fruit—that ain’t dead enough. They got boiled flannel now,” he said, “and that good sauce!...You remember that good sauce they used to make?” He leered at Mrs. Jack with an air of such insinuation that she was again set off in a fit of shuddering hysteria:
“You mean that awful…tasteless…pasty…goo...about the colour of a dead lemon?”
“You got it,” the old man nodded his wise and tired old head in weary agreement. “You got it…That’s it…They still make it…So I’ve been die-etting all the way back!” For the first time his tired old voice showed a trace of animation. “Carlsbad wasn’t in it compared to the die-etting I had to do on the English boat!” He paused, then with a glint of cynic humour in his weary eyes, he said: “It was fit for nothing but a bunch of goys!”