get four hours sleep a night, anyway.’
“Well say, mother she was scared green. So I tucked her under m’ arm, and we hit it up across the ocean. Went t’ Germany, knowin’ that it would feel homelike there, an’ we took in all the swell baden, and chased up the Jungfrau — sa-a-ay, that’s a classy little mountain, that Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess. She never set down except for meals, and she wrote picture postals like mad. But sa-a-ay, girl, was I lonesome! Maybe that trip done me good. Anyway, I’m livin’ yet. I stuck it out for four months, an’ that ain’t so rotten for a guy who just grew up on printer’s ink ever since he was old enough to hold a bunch of papers under his arm. Well, one day mother an’ me was sittin’ out on one of them veranda cafes they run to over there, w’en somebody hits me a crack on the shoulder, an’ there stands old Ryan who used t’ do A. P. here. He was foreign correspondent for some big New York syndicate papers over there.
“`Well if it ain’t Blackie!’ he says. `What in Sam Hill are you doing out of your own cell when Milwaukee’s just got four more games t’ win the pennant?’
“Sa-a-a-ay, girl, w’en I got through huggin’ him around the neck an’ buyin’ him drinks I knew it was me for the big ship. `Mother,’ I says, `if you got anybody on your mind that you neglected t’ send picture postals to, now’s’ your last chance. ‘F I got to die I’m going out with m’ scissors in one mitt, and m’ trusty paste-pot by m’ side!’ An’ we hits it up for old Milwaukee. I ain’t been away since, except w’en I was out with the ball team, sending in sportin’ extry dope for the pink sheet. The last time I was in at Baumbach’s in comes Von Gerhard an’—”
“Who are Baumbach’s?” I interrupted.
Blackie regarded me pityingly. “You ain’t never been to Baumbach’s? Why girl, if you don’t know Baumbach’s, you ain’t never been properly introduced to Milwaukee. No wonder you ain’t hep to the ways of this little community. There ain’t what the s’ciety editor would call the proper ontong cordyal between you and the natives if you haven’t had coffee at Baumbach’s. It ain’t hardly legal t’ live in Milwaukee all this time without ever having been inside of B—”
“Stop! If you do not tell me at once just where this wonderful place may be found, and what one does when one finds it, and how I happened to miss it, and why it is so necessary to the proper understanding of the city —”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Blackie, grinning, “I’ll romp you over there to-morrow afternoon at four o’clock. Ach Himmel! What will that for a grand time be, no?”
“Blackie, you’re a dear to be so polite to an old married cratur’ like me. Did you notice—that is, does Ernst von Gerhard drop in often at Baumbach’s? ”
CHAPTER VIII
KAFFEE AND KAFFEEKUCHEN
I have visited Baumbach’s. I have heard Milwaukee drinking its afternoon Kaffee.
O Baumbach’s, with your deliciously crumbling butter cookies and your kaffee kuchen, and your thick cream, and your thicker waitresses and your cockroaches, and your dinginess and your dowdy German ladies and your black, black Kaffee,where in this country is there another like you!
Blackie, true to his promise, had hailed me from the doorway on the afternoon of the following day. In the rush of the day’s work I had quite forgotten about Blackie and Baumbach’s.
“Come, Kindchen!” he called. “Get your bonnet on. We will by Baumbach’s go, no?”
Ruefully I gazed at the grimy cuffs of my blouse, and felt of my dishevelled hair. “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t go. I look so mussy. Haven’t had time to brush up.”
“Brush up!” scoffed Blackie, “the only thing about you that will need brushin’ up is your German. I was goin’ t’ warn you to rumple up your hair a little so you wouldn’t feel overdressed w’en you got there. Come on, girl.”
And so I came. And oh, I’m so glad I came!
I must have passed it a dozen times without once noticing it—just a dingy little black shop nestling between two taller buildings, almost within the shadow of the city hall. Over the sidewalk swung a shabby black sign with gilt letters that spelled, “Franz Baumbach.”
Blackie waved an introductory hand in the direction of the sign. “There he is. That’s all you’ll ever see of him.”
“Dead? ” asked I, regretfully, as we entered the narrow doorway.
“No; down in the basement baking Kaffeekuchen.”
Two tiny show-windows faced the street—such queer, old-fashioned windows in these days of plate glass. At the back they were quite open to the shop, and in one of them reposed a huge, white, immovable structure—a majestic, heavy, nutty, surely indigestible birthday cake. Around its edge were flutings and scrolls of white icing, and on its broad breast reposed cherries, and stout butterflies of jelly, and cunning traceries of colored sugar. It was quite the dressiest cake I had ever beheld. Surely no human hand could be wanton enough to guide a knife through all that magnificence. But in the center of all this splendor was an inscription in heavy white letters of icing: “Charlottens Geburtstag.”
Reluctantly I tore my gaze from this imposing example of the German confectioner’s art, for Blackie was tugging impatiently at my sleeve.
“But Blackie,” I marveled, “do you honestly suppose that that structure is intended for some Charlotte’s birthday?”
“In Milwaukee,” explained Blackie, “w’en you got a birthday you got t’ have a geburtstag cake, with your name on it, and all the cousins and aunts and members of the North Side Frauen Turner Verein Gesellchaft, in for the day. It ain’t considered decent if you don’t. Are you ready to fight your way into the main tent?”
It was holiday time, and the single narrow aisle of the front shop was crowded. It was not easy to elbow one’s way through the packed little space. Men and women were ordering recklessly of the cakes of every description that were heaped in cases and on shelves.
Cakes! What a pale; dry name to apply to those crumbling, melting, indigestible German confections! Blackie grinned with enjoyment while I gazed. There were cakes the like of which I had never seen and of which I did not even know the names. There were little round cup cakes made of almond paste that melts in the mouth; there were Schnecken glazed with a delicious candied brown sugar; there were Bismarcks composed of layer upon layer of flaky crust inlaid with an oozy custard that evades the eager consumer at the first bite, and that slides down one’s collar
