"To dinner, to dinner, ladies!"

They go again to the kitchen, all still in their underwear, all
unwashed, in slippers and barefoot. A tasty vegetable soup of pork
rinds and tomatoes, cutlets, and pastry-cream rolls are served.
But no one has any appetite, thanks to the sedentary life and
irregular sleep, and also because the majority of the girls, just
like school-girls on a holiday, had already managed during the day
to send to the store for halvah, nuts, rakkat loukoum (Turkish
Delight), dill-pickles and molasses candy, and had through this
spoiled their appetites. Only Nina alone--a small, pug-nosed,
snuffling country girl, seduced only two months ago by a
travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a brothel--eats
for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman of the
common people has not yet disappeared in her.

Jennie, who has only picked fastidiously at her cutlet and eaten
half her cream roll, speaks to her in a tone of hypocritical
solicitude:

"Really, Pheclusha, you might just as well eat my cutlet, too.
Eat, my dear, eat; don't be bashful--you ought to be gaining in
health. But do you know what I'll tell you, ladies?" she turns to
her mates, "Why, our Pheclusha has a tape-worm, and when a person
has a tape-worm, he always eats for two: half for himself, half
for the worm."

Nina sniffs angrily and answers in a bass which comes as a
surprise from one of her stature, and through her nose: