"HOW about it?" Mrs. Chaikin said to me, ominously.

"About what? What do you mean, Mrs. Chaikin?"

"Oh, you know what I mean. It is no use playing the fool and trying to make a fool of me."

The conversation was held in our deserted shop on an afternoon. The three sewing-machines, the cutting-table, and the pressing-table looked desolate.

She spoke in an undertone, almost in a whisper, lest the secret of her husband's relations with me should leak out and reach his employers. She had been guarding that secret all along, but now, that our undertaking had apparently collapsed, she was particularly uneasy about it

"I don't believe that store in the West has failed at all. In fact, I know it has not. Somebody told me all about it."

This was her method of cross-examining me. I read her a clipping containing the news of the bankruptcy, but as she could not read it herself, she only sneered. I reasoned with her, I pleaded, I swore; but she kept sneering or nodding her head mournfully

"I don't believe you. I don't believe you," she finally said, shutting her eyes with a gesture of despair and exhaustion. "Do I believe a dog when it barks? Neither do I believe you. I curse the day when I first met you. It was the black year that brought you to us." She fell to wringing her hands and moaning: "Woe is me! Woe is me!"

Finally she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. In my despair I longed for somebody to whom I could unbosom myself. I thought of Meyer Nodelman. A self-made man and one who had begun manufacturing almost penniless like myself, he seemed to be just the man I needed. A thought glimmered through my mind, "And who knows but he may come to my rescue I was going to call at his warehouse, but upon second thought I realized that the seat of his cold self-interest would scarcely be a favorable setting for the interview and that I must try to entrap him in the humanizing atmosphere of his mother's home for the purpose

The next time I saw him at his mother's I took him up to my little attic and laid my tribulations before him. I told him the whole story, almost without embellishments, omitting nothing but Chaikin's name

"Is it all true?" he interrupted me at one point

I swore that it was, and went on. At the end I offered to prove it all to his satisfaction

"You don't need to prove it to me," he replied. "What do I care?" Then, suddenly, casting off his reserve, he blurted out: "Look here, young fellow! If you think I am going to lend you money you are only wasting time, for I am not." "And why not?" I asked, boldly, with studied dignity

"Why not! You better tell me why yes," he chuckled. "You have a lot of spunk. That you certainly have, and you ought to make a good business man, but I won't loan you money, for all that."

"Weren't you once hard up yourself, Mr. Nodelman? You have made a success of it, and now it would only be right that you should help another fellow get up in the world. You won't lose a cent by it, either. I take an oath on it."

"You can't have an oath cashed in a bank, can you?"

"Why did that commission merchant take a chance? If a Gentile is willing to help a Jew, and one whom he had never seen before, you should not hesitate, either."

"Well, there is no use talking about it," was his final decision

The following day I received a letter from him, inviting me to his office

His warehouse occupied a vast loft on a little street off Broadway. Arrived there, I had to pass several men, all in their shirt-sleeves, who were attacking mountains of cloth with long, narrow knives. One of these directed me to a remote window, in front of which I presently found Nodelman lecturing a man who wore a tape-measure around his neck

Nodelman kept me waiting, without offering me a scat, a good half-hour. He was in his shirt-sleeves, like the others, yet he looked far more dignified than I had ever seen him look before. It was as though the environment of his little kingdom had made another man of him

Finally, he left the man with the tape-measure and silently led me into his little private office, a narrow strip of partitioned-off space at the other end of the loft

When we were seated and the partition door was shut he said, with grave mien, "Well," and fell silent again

I gazed at him patiently

"Well," he repeated, "I have thought it over." And again he paused. At last he burst out: "I do want to help you, young fellow. You didn't expect it, did you? I do want to help you. And do you know why? Because otherwise you won't pay that Gentile and I don't want a good-hearted Gentile to think that Jews are a bad lot. That's number one. Number two is this: If you think Meyer Nodelman is a hog, you don't know Meyer Nodelman. Number three: I rather liked the way you talked yesterday. I said to myself, said I: 'An educated fellow who can talk like that will be all right. He ought to be given a lift, for most educated people are damn fools.' Well, I'll tell you what I am willing to do for you. I'll get you the goods for that order of yours, not for thirty days, but for sixty. What do you think of that? Now is Nodelman a hog or is he not? But that's as far as I am willing to go. I can only get you the goods for that Third Avenue order. See? But that won't be enough to help you out of your scrape, not enough for you to pay that good Gentile on time." He engaged in some mental arithmetic by means of which he reached the conclusion that I should need an additional four hundred dollars, and he wound up by an ultimatum: he would not furnish me the goods until I had produced that amount

"Look here, young fellow," he added; "since you were smart enough to get that Gentile and Meyer Nodelman to help you out, it ought not to be a hard job for you to get a third fellow to take an interest in you. Do you remember what I told you about those credit faces? I think you have got one."

"I have an honest heart, too," I said, with a smile

"Your heart I can't get into, so I don't know. See? Maybe there is a rogue hiding there and maybe there isn't. But your face and your talk certainly are all right. They ought to be able to get you some more cash. And if they don't, then they don't deserve that I should help you out, either. See?" He chuckled in appreciation of his own syllogism

"It's a nice piece of Talmud reasoning," I complimented him, with an enthusiastic laugh. "But, seriously, Mr. Nodelman, I shall pay you every cent. You run absolutely no risk."

I pleaded with him to grant me the accommodation unconditionally. I tried to convince him that I should contrive to do without the additional cash. But he was obdurate, and at last I took my leave

"Wait a moment! What's your hurry? Are you afraid you'll be a couple of minutes longer becoming a millionaire? There is something I want to ask you."

"What is it, Mr. Nodelman?"

"How about your studying to be a doctor-philosopher?" he asked, archly

"Oh, well, one can attend to business and find time for books, too,"
I answered

I came away in a new transport of expectations and in a new agony of despair at once. On the whole, however, my spirits were greatly buoyed up.

Encouraged by the result of taking Nodelman into my confidence, I decided to try a similar heart-to-heart talk on Max Margolis, better known to the reader as Maximum Max. He had some money.

I had seen very little of him in the past two years, having stumbled upon him in the street but two or three times. But upon each of these occasions he had stopped me and inquired about my affairs with genuine interest. He was fond of me. I had no doubt about it. And he was so good-natured. Our last chance meeting antedated my new venture by at least six months, and he was not likely to have any knowledge of it. I felt that he would be sincerely glad to hear of it and I hoped that he would be inclined to help me launch it. Anyhow, he seemed to be my last resort, and I was determined to make my appeal to him as effective as I knew how

As he had always seen me shabbily clad, I decided to overwhelm him with a new suit of clothes. I needed one, at any rate

After some seeking and inquiring, I found him in a Bowery furniture-store, one of the several places from which he supplied his instalment customers.

It was about 10 o'clock in the morning

"There is something I want to consult you about, Max," I said. "Something awfully important to me. You're the only man I know who could advise me and in whom I can confide," I added, with an implication of great intimacy and affection. "It's a business scheme, Max. I have a chance to make lots of money."

The conversation was held in a dusky passage of the labyrinthine store, a narrow lane running between two barricades of furniture

"What is that? A business scheme?" he asked, in a preoccupied tone of voice and straining his eyes to look me over. "You are dressed up, I see. Quite prosperous, aren't you?"

As we emerged into the glare of the Bowery he scrutinized my suit once again. I quailed. I now felt that to have come in such a screamingly new suit was a fatal mistake. I cursed myself for an idiot of a smart Aleck. But he spoke to me with his usual cordiality and my spirits rose again. However, he seemed to be busy, and so I asked him to set an hour when he could see me at leisure. We made an appointment for 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I was to meet him at the same furniture-store; but upon second thought, and with another glance at my new clothes, he said, jovially: "Why, you are rigged out like a regular monarch! It is quite an honor to invite you to the house. Come up, will you? And, as I won't have to go out to meet you, you can make it 2 o'clock, or half past."

CHAPTER II

MAX occupied the top floor of an old private house on Henry Street, a small "railroad" apartment of two large, bright rooms—a living-room and a kitchen—with two small, dark bedrooms between them. The ceiling was low and the air somewhat tainted with the odor of mold and dampness. I found Max in the general living-room, which was also a dining-room, a fat boy of three on his lap and a slender, pale girl of eight on a chair close by. His wife, a slender young woman with a fine white complexion and serious black eyes, was clearing away the lunch things

"Mrs. Margolis, Mr. Levinsky," he introduced us. "Plainly speaking, this is my wifey and this is a friend of mine."

As she was leaving the room for the kitchen he called after her,
"Dvorah! Dora! make some tea, will you?"

She craned her neck and gave him a look of resentment. "It's a good thing you are telling me that," she said. "Otherwise I shouldn't know what I have got to do, should I?"

When she had disappeared he explained to me that he variously addressed her by the Yiddish or English form of her name

"We are plain Yiddish folk," he generalized, good-humoredly

A few minutes later, as Mrs. Margolis placed a glass of Russian tea before me, he drew her to him and pinched her white cheek

"What do you think of my wifey, Levinsky?"

She smiled—a grave, deprecating smile—and took to pottering about the house

"And what do you think of these little customers?" he went on. "Lucy, examine mamma in spelling. Quick! Dora, be a good girl, sit down and let Levinsky see how educated you are." ("Educated" he said in English, with the accent on the "a.") "What do you want?" his wife protested, softly. "Mr. Levinsky wants to see you on business, and here you are bothering him with all sorts of nonsense

"Never mind his business. It won't run away. Sit down, I say. It won't take long." She yielded. Casting bashful side-glances at nobody in particular, she seated herself opposite Lucy

"Well?" she said, with a little laugh

I thought her eyes looked too serious, almost angry. "Insane people have eyes of this kind," I said to myself. I also made a mental note of her clear, fresh, delicate complexion. Otherwise she did not interest me in the least, and I mutely prayed Heaven to take her out of the room

"How do you spell 'great'?" the little girl demanded

"G-r-e-a-t—great," her mother answered, with a smile

"Book?"

"B-o-o-k—book. Oh, give me some harder words."

"Laughter."

"L-a-u-g-h-t-e-r—laughter."

"Is that correct?" Margolis turned to me, all beaming. "I wish I could do as much. And nobody has taught her, either. She has learned it all by herself.

Little Lucy is the only teacher she ever had. But she will soon be ahead of her. Won't she, Lucy?"

"I'm afraid I am ahead of her already," Mrs. Margolis said, gaily, yet flushed with excitement

"You are not!" Lucy protested, with a good-natured pout

"Shut up, bad girl you," her mother retorted, again with a bashful side-glance

"Is that the way you talk to your mamma?" Max intervened. "I'll tell your teacher."

I was on pins and needles to be alone with him and to get down to the object of my visit

Finally he said, brusquely: "Well, we have had enough of that.
Leave us alone, Dora. Go to the parlor and take the kids along."

She obeyed

When he heard of my venture he was interested. He often interrupted me with boisterous expressions of admiration for my subterfuges as well as for the plan as a whole. With all his boisterousness, however, there was an air of caution about him, as if he scented danger. When I finally said that all depended upon my raising four hundred dollars his face clouded

"I see, I see," he murmured, with sudden estrangement. "I see. I see." "Don't lose courage," I said to myself. "Nodelman was exactly like that at first. Go right ahead."

I portrayed my business prospects in the most alluring colors and gave Max to understand that if "somebody" advanced me the four hundred dollars he would be sure to get it back in thirty days plus any interest he might name

"It would be terrible if I had to let it all go to pieces on account of such a thing," I concluded

There was a moment of very awkward silence. It was broken by
Max

"It's really too bad. What are you going to do about it?" he said.
"Where can you get such a 'somebody'?"

"I don't know. That's why I came to consult you. I thought you might suggest some way. It would be a pity if I had to give it all up on account of four hundred dollars."

"Indeed it would. It would be terrible. Still, four hundred dollars is not four hundred cents. I wish I were a rich man. I should lend it to you at once. You know I should."

"I should pay you every cent of it, Max."

"You say it as if I had money. You know I have not." What I did know was that he had, and he knew that I did

He took to analyzing the situation and offering me advice. Why not go to that kindly Gentile, the commission merchant, make a clean breast of it, and obtain an extension of time? Why not apply to some money-lender? Why not make a vigorous appeal to Nodelman? He seemed to be an obliging fellow, so if I pressed him a little harder he might give me the cash as well as the goods

I was impelled to retort that advice was cheap, and he apparently read my thoughts

Presently he said, with genuine ardor: "I tell you what, Levinsky. Why not try to get your old landlady to open her stocking? From what you have told me, she ought not to be a hard nut to crack if you only go about it in the right way.

This suggestion made a certain appeal to me, but I would not betray it. I continued resentfully silent

"You just try her, Levinsky. She'll let you have the four hundred dollars, or half of it, at least."

"And if she does, her son will refuse to get me the goods," I remarked, with a sneer.

"Nonsense. If you know how to handle her, she will realize that she must keep her mouth shut until after she gets the money back."

"Oh, what's the use?" I said, impatiently. "I must get the cash at once, or all is lost."

Again he spoke of money-lenders. He went into details about one of them and offered to ascertain his address for me. He evidently felt awkward about his part in the matter and eager to atone for it in some way

"Why should a usurer trust me?" I said, rising to go.

"Wait. What's your hurry? If that money-lender hears your story, he may trust you. He is a peculiar fellow, don't you know. When he takes a fancy to a man he is willing to take a chance on him. Of course, the interest would be rather high." He paused abruptly, wrinkled his forehead with an effect of pondering some new scheme, and said: "Wait. I think I have a better plan.

I'll see if I can't get you the money without a money-lender." With this he sprang to his feet and had his wife bring him his coat and hat. "I'll be back in less than half an hour," he said. "Dvorah dear, give Levinsky some more tea, will you? I am going out for a few minutes. Don't let him be downhearted." Then, shaking a finger of warning at me, he said, playfully, "Only take care that you don't fall in love with her!" And he was gone

"It's all play-acting," I thought. "He just wants me to believe he is trying to do something for me." But, of course, I was not altogether devoid of hope that I was mistaken and that he was making a sincere effort to raise a loan for me

Mrs. Margolis went into the kitchen immediately her husband departed.

Presently she came back, carrying a glass of tea on a saucer. She placed it before me with an embarrassed side-glance, brought some cookies, and seated herself at the far end of the table. I uttered some complimentary trivialities about the children

When a man finds himself alone with a woman who is neither his wife nor a close relative, both feel awkward. It is as though they heard a whisper, "There is nobody to watch the two of you."

Still, confused as I was, I was fully aware of her tempting complexion and found her angry black eyes strangely interesting. Upon the whole, however, I do not think she made any appeal to me save by virtue of the fact that she was a woman and that we were alone. I was tense with the consciousness of that fact, and everything about her disturbed me. She wore a navy-blue summer wrapper and I noticed the way it set off the soft whiteness of her neck. I remarked to myself that she looked younger than her husband, that she must be about twenty-eight or thirty, perhaps. My glances apparently caused her painful embarrassment. Finally she got up again, making a pretense of bustling about the room. It seemed to me that when she was on her feet she looked younger than when she was seated

I asked the boy his name, and he answered in lugubrious, but distinct, accents: "Daniel Margolis."

"He speaks like a grown person," I said

"She used to speak like that, too, when she was of his age," my hostess replied, with a glance in the direction of her daughter

"Did you?" I said to Lucy

The little girl grinned coyly

"Why don't you answer the gentleman's question?" her mother rebuked her, in English. "It's Mr. Levinsky, a friend of papa's."

Lucy gave me a long stare and lost all interest in me. "Don't you like me at all? Not even a little bit?" I pleaded

She soon unbent and took to plying me with questions. Where did I live? Was I a "customer peddler "like her papa? How long had I been in America? (A question which a child of the East Side hears as often as it does queries about the weather.) "Can you spell?" "No," I answered. "Not at all?"

"Not at all!"

"Shame! But my papa can't spell, neither."

"Shut up, you bad girl you!" her mother broke in with a laugh. "Vere you lea'n such nasty things? By your mamma? The gentleman will think by your mamma."

She delivered her a little lecture in English, taking pains to produce the "th" and the American "r," though her "w's" were "v's."

She urged me not to let the tea get cold. As I took hold of the tall, thin, cylindrical glass I noted that it was scrupulously clean and that its contents had a good clear color. I threw a glance around the room and I saw that it was well kept and tidy

Mrs. Margolis took a seat again. Lucy, with part of a cooky in her mouth, stepped over to her and seated herself on her lap, throwing her arm around her. She struck me as the very image of her mother. Presently, however, I discovered that she resembled her father quite as closely. It seemed as though the one likeness lay on the surface of her face, while the other loomed up from underneath, as the reflection of a face does from under the surface of water. Lucy soon wearied of her mother and walked over to my side. I put her on my lap. She would not let me pat her, but she did not mind sitting on my knees.

"Are you a good speller?" I asked

"I c'n spell all the words we get at school," she answered, sagely

"How do you spell 'colonel'?"

"We never got it at school. But you can't spell it, either."

"How do you know I can't? Maybe I can. Well, let us take an easier word. How do you spell 'because'?"

She spelled it correctly, her mother joining in playfully. I gave them other words, addressing myself to both, and they made a race of it, each trying to head off or outshout the other. At first Mrs. Margolis did so with feigned gaiety, but her face soon set into a grave look and glowed with excitement

At last I asked them to spell "coefficient."

"We never got it at school," Lucy demurred

"I don't know what it means," said Mrs. Margolis, with a shrug of her shoulders.

"It means something in mathematics, in high figuring," I explained in Yiddish

Mrs. Margolis shrugged her shoulders once more

I asked Lucy to try me in spelling. She did and I acquitted myself so well that she exclaimed: "Oh, you liar you! Why did you say you didn't know how to spell?"

Once more her mother took her to task for her manners

"Is that the vay to talk to a gentleman? Shame! Vere you lea'n up to be such a pig? Not by your mamma!"

When Max came back Lucy hastened to inform him that I could spell "awful good." To which he replied in Yiddish that he knew I was a smart fellow, that I could read and write "everything," and that I had studied to go to college and "to be a doctor, a lawyer, or anything."

His wife looked me over with bashful side-glances. "Really?" she said.

Max told me a lame story about his errand and promised to let me know the "final result." It was clearer than ever to me that he was making a fool of me.

CHAPTER III

WHEN I hear a new melody and it makes an appeal to me its effect usually lasts only as long as I hear it, but it is almost sure to reassert itself later on. I scarcely ever think of it during the first two, three, or four days, but then, all of a sudden, it will pop up in my brain and haunt me a few days in succession, humming itself and nagging me like a living thing.

This was precisely what happened to me with regard to Mrs. Margolis. During the first two days after I left her house I never gave her a thought, but on the third her shy side-glances suddenly loomed up in my mind and would not leave it. Just her black, serious eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white, strikingly interesting complexion. Her face in general was a mere blur in my memory

I was incessantly racking my brain over my affairs. I was so low-spirited and worried that I was unconscious of the food I ate or of the streets through which I passed, yet her manner of darting embarrassed glances out of the corner of her eye and her complexion were never absent from my mind. I felt like seeing her once more. However, the prospect of calling at her house was now anything but alluring. I could almost see the annoyed air with which her husband would receive me

I sought out two usurers and begged each of them to grant me the loan, but they unyieldingly insisted on more substantial security than the bare story or my venture. I made other efforts to raise the money. I approached several people, including the proprietor of the little music-store. All to no purpose

One afternoon, eight or ten days after my call at the Margolises', when I came to my "factory" I found under the door a closed envelope bearing the name of that Western firm. It contained a typewritten letter and a check in full payment of my bill. Also a circular explaining that the firm had been reorganized with plenty of capital, and naming as one of its new directors a man who, from the tone of the circular, seemed to be of high standing in the financial world

My head was in a whirl. The desolate-looking sewing-machines of my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly brightened up. I looked at the check again and again. The figure on it literally staggered me. It seemed to be part of a fairy tale

I rushed over to Nodelman's office, but found him gone for the day. The next thing on my program was to carry the glad news to the Chaikins and to discuss plans for the immediate future with my partner. But Chaikin never came home before 7. So I first dropped in on the Margolises to flash my check in Max's face and, incidentally, to see his wife

I found him playing with his fat boy

"Hello, Max! I have good news!" I shouted, excitedly. Which actually meant: "Don't be uneasy, Max. I am not going to ask you for a loan again."

When he had examined the check he said, sheepishly: "Now you are all right. Why, something told me all along that you would get it." His wife came in, apparently from the kitchen. She returned my "Good evening" with free and easy amiability, without any shyness or side-glances, and disappeared again. I felt annoyed. I was tempted to call after her to come back and let me take a good look at her

"Say, Levinsky, you must have thought I would not trust you for the four hundred dollars," Max said. "May I have four hundred days of distress if I have a cent. What few dollars I do have is buried in the business. So help me, God! Let a few of my customers stop paying and I would have to go begging. It's the real truth I am telling you. Honest."

"I know, I know," I said, awkwardly. "Well, it was as if the check had dropped from heaven. Thank God! Now I can begin to do things."

I went over the main facts of my venture, this time with a touch of bluster.

And he listened with far readier attention and more genuine interest than he had done on the previous occasion. We discussed my plans and my prospects.

At one point, when I referred to the Western check, he asked to see it again, just for curiosity's sake, and as I watched him look it over I could almost see the change that it was producing in his attitude toward me. I do not know to what extent he had previously believed my story, if at all. One thing was clear: the magic check now made it all real to him. As he handed me back the strip of paper he gave me a look that seemed to say: "So you are a manufacturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable ragamuffin."

Mrs. Margolis reappeared. Her husband told her of my great check and she returned some trivialities. As we thus chatted, I made a mental note of the fascinating feminine texture of her flesh

He made me stay to supper. It was a cheery repast. As though to make amends for his failure to respond when I knocked at his door, Max overwhelmed me with attention

We were eating cold sorrel soup, prepared in the old Ghetto way, with cream, bits of boiled egg, cucumber, and scallions

"How do you like it?" he asked

"Delicious! And the genuine article, too."

"'The genuine article'!" he mocked me. "What's the use praising it when you eat it like a bird? What's the matter with you? Are you bashful? Fire away, old man!" Then to his wife: "Why do you keep quiet, Dvorah? Why don't you tell him to eat like a man and not like a bird?"

"Maybe he doesn't care for my cooking," she jested, demurely

"Why, why," I replied. "The sorrel soup is fit for a king."

"You mean for a president," Max corrected me. "We are in
America, not in Europe."

"How do you know the President of the United States would care for a plate of cold sorrel soup?"

"And how do you know a king would?" "If you care for it, I am satisfied," the hostess said to me

"I certainly do. I haven't eaten anything like it since I left home," I replied

"Feed him well, Dvorah. Now is your chance. He will soon be a millionaire, don't you know. Then he won't bother about calling on poor people like us."

"But I have said the sorrel soup is fit for a king, and a king has many millions," I rejoined. "I shall always be glad to come, provided Lucy and Dannie have no objection." "You remember their names, don't you?" Mrs. Margolis said, beamingly. "You certainly have a good memory."

"Who else should have one?" her husband chimed in. "I have told you he was going to study to be a doctor or a lawyer. Lucy, did you hear what uncle said? If you let him in he will come to see us even when he is worth a million. What do you say? Will you let him in?"

Lucy grinned childishly

Max did most of the talking. He entertained me with stories of some curious weddings which he said had recently been celebrated in his dance-halls, and, as usual, it was not easy to draw a line of demarkation between fact and fiction. Of one bridegroom, who had agreed to the marriage under threats of violence from the girl's father, he said: "You should have seen the fellow! He looked like a man going to the electric chair. They were afraid he might bolt, so the bride's father and brother, big, strapping fellows both, stuck to him like two detectives. 'You had better not make monkey business,' they said to him. 'If you don't want a wedding, you'll have a funeral.' That's exactly what they said to him. I was standing close to them and I heard it with my own ears. May I not live till to-morrow if I did not." Mrs. Margolis looked down shamefacedly. She certainly was not unaware of her husband's failing, and she obviously took anything but pride in it. As I glanced at her face at this moment it struck me as a singularly truthful face. "Those eyes of hers do not express anger, but integrity," I said to myself. And the more I looked at her, watched her gestures, and listened to her voice, the stronger grew my impression that she was a serious-minded, ingenuous woman, incapable of playing a part. Her mannerisms were mostly her version of manners, and those that were not were frankly affected, as it were

The meal over and the dishes washed, Mrs. Margolis caused Lucy to bring her school reader and began to read it aloud, Lucy or I correcting her pronunciation where it was faulty. She was frankly parading her intellectual achievements before me, and I could see that she took them quite seriously.

She was very sensitive about the mistakes she made. She accepted our corrections, Lucy's and mine, with great earnestness, often with a gesture of annoyance and mortification at the failure of her memory

When I bade them good night Max said, heartily, in English, "Call again, Levinsky." And he added, in a mixture of English and Yiddish, "Don't be a stranger, even if you are a manufacturer."

"Call again," his wife echoed, affably

"Call again!" shouted Dannie, in his funereal voice

I left with the comfortable feeling of having spent an hour or two in a house where I was sincerely welcome

"It's a good thing to have real friends," I soliloquized in a transport of good spirits, on my way to the Elevated station. "Now I sha'n't feel all alone in the world. There is at least one house where I can call and feel at home."

I beheld Mrs. Margolis's face and her slender figure and I was conscious of a remote desire to see her again

I was in high feather. While the Elevated train was carrying me up-town I visioned an avalanche of new orders for my shop and a spacious factory full of machines and men. I saw myself building up a great business. An ugly thought flashed through my mind: Why be saddled with a partner? Why not get rid of Chaikin? I belittled the part which his samples had played in my successful start, and it seemed to be a cruel injustice to myself to share my fortune with a man who had no more brains than a cat. But I instantly saw the other side of the situation: It was Chaikin's models that had made the Manheimers what they were, and if I clung to him until he could afford to let me announce him as my partner the very news of it would be a tremendous boost for my factory. And then I had a real qualm of compunction for having entertained that thought even for a single moment. My heart warmed to Chaikin and his family. "I shall be faithful to them," I vowed inwardly.

"They have been so good to me. We must be absolutely devoted to each other.

Their house, too, will be like a home to me. Oh, it is so sweet to have friends, real friends."

It was close upon 10 o'clock when I reached the Chaikins' flat in Harlem. I had barely closed the door behind me when I whipped out the check, and, dangling it before Mrs. Chaikin, I said, radiantly: "Good evening. Guess what it is!" "The check you expected from your uncle or cousin or whatever he is to you.

Is it?" she conjectured

"No. It's something far better," I replied. "It's a check from the Western company, and for the full amount, too." And, although I was fairly on the road to atheism, I exclaimed, with a thrill of genuine pity, "Oh, God has been good to us, Mrs. Chaikin!"

I let her see the figures, which she could scarcely make out. Then her husband took a look at the check. He did know something about figures, so he read the sum out aloud

Instead of hailing it with joy, as I had expected her to do, she said to me, glumly: "And how do we know that you did not receive more?"

"But that was the bill," her husband put in

"I am not asking you, am I?" she disciplined him

"But it is the amount on the bill," I said, with a smile

"And how do we know that it is?" she demanded. "It's you who write the bills, and it's you who get the checks. What do we know?"

"Mrs. Chaikin! Mrs. Chaikin!" I remonstrated. "Why should you be so suspicious? Can't you see that I am the most devoted friend you people ever had? God has blessed us; we are making a success of our business so we must be devoted to one another, while here you imagine all kinds of nonsense."

"A woman will be a woman," Chaikin muttered, with his sheepish smile

The unfeigned ardor of my plea produced an impression on Mrs.
Chaikin.

Still, she insisted upon receiving her husband's share of the profits at once in spot cash. I argued again

"Why, of course you are going to get your share of the profits," I said, genially. "Of course you are. Only we must first pay for the goods of those five hundred coats and for some other things. Mustn't we? Then, too, there is that other order to fill. We need more goods and cash for wages and rent and other expenses.

"But you said you were going to get it all yourself, and now you want us to pay for it. You think you are smart, don't you?"

Her husband opened his mouth, but she waved it shut before she had any idea what he wanted to say

"Anybody could fool you," she said. "'When a fool goes shopping there is rejoicing among the shopkeepers.'"

With our joint efforts we finally managed to placate her, however, and the next evening our shop was the scene of feverish activity.

CHAPTER IV

I FILLED my Third Avenue order and went on soliciting other business. The season was waning, but I obtained a number of small orders and laid foundations for future sales. Our capital was growing apace, but we often lacked working cash

After I paid the debt I owed Meyer Nodelman I obtained other favors from him. He took a sponsorial interest in my business and often offered me the benefit of his commercial experience in the form of maxims

"Don't bite off more than you can chew, Levinsky," he would tell me.

"Finding it easy to get people to trust you is not enough. You must also find it easy to pay them."

Some of his other rules were: "Be pleasant with the man you deal with, even if he knows you don't mean it.

He likes it, anyway."

"Take it from me, Levinsky: honesty is the best policy. There is only one line of business in which dishonesty pays: the burglar business, provided the burglar does not get caught. If I thought lying could help my business, I should lie day and night. But I have learned that it hurts far more than it helps. Be sure that the other fellow believes what you say. If you have his confidence you have him by the throat."

It was not always easy to comply with Meyer's tenets, however. The inadequacy of my working capital often forced me to have recourse to subterfuges that could not exactly be called honorable. One day, when we had some bills to meet two days before I could expect to obtain the cash, I made out and signed checks, but inclosed each of them in the wrong envelope—this supposed act of inadvertence gaining me the needed two days of grace. On another occasion I sent out a number of checks without my signature, which presumably I had forgotten to affix. There were instances when I was so hard pressed for funds that the fate of our factory hinged on seventy-five or a hundred dollars. In one of these crises I bought two gold watches on the instalment plan, for the express and sole purpose of pawning them for fifty dollars. I bought the watches of two men who did not know each other, and returned them as soon as I could spare the cash to redeem them, forfeiting the several weekly payments which I had made on the pretended purchases.

There were instances, too, when I had to borrow of my employees a few dollars with which to buy cotton. Needless to say that all this happened in the early stages of my experience as a manufacturer. I have long since been above and beyond such methods. Indeed, business honor and business dignity are often a luxury in which only those in the front ranks of success can indulge. But then there are features of the game in which the small man is apt to be more honorable and less cruel than the financial magnate

I was continually consulting Max on my affairs. Not that I needed his advice or expected to act upon it. These confidential talks seemed to promote our intimacy and to enhance the security of the welcome I found in his house. A great immigrant city like New York or Chicago is full of men and women who are alone amid a welter of human life. For these nothing has a greater glamour than a family in whose house they might be made to feel at home. I was one of these desolate souls. I still missed my mother. The anniversary of her death was still a feast of longing agony and spiritual bliss to me. I scarcely ever visited the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir these days, but on that great day I was sure to be there. Forgetful of my atheism, I would place a huge candle for her soul, attend all the three services, without omitting a line, and recite the prayer for the dead with sobs in my heart. I had craved some family who would show me warm friendship. The Margolises were such a family (Meyer Nodelman never invited me to his house). They were a godsend to me

Max was essentially a hospitable man, and really fond of me. As for his wife, who received me with the same hearty welcome as he, her liking for me was primarily based, as she once put it herself in the presence of her husband, upon my intellectual qualifications

"It's good to have educated people come to the house," she remarked. "It's good for the children and for everybody else." "I knew she would like you," Max said to me. "She would give her head for education. Only better look out, you two. See that you don't fall in love with each other. Ha, ha!"

Sometimes there were other visitors in the house—some of Max's friends, his and her fellow-townspeople, her relatives, or some neighbor. Dora's great friend was a stout woman with flaxen hair and fishy eyes, named Sadie, or Mrs. Shornik, whose little girl, Beckie, was a classmate of Lucy's, the acquaintance and devoted intimacy of the two mothers having originated in the intimacy of the two school-girls. Sadie lived several blocks from the Margolises, but she absolutely never let a day pass without calling on her, if it were only for just time enough to kiss her. She was infatuated with Dora, and Beckie was infatuated with Lucy

"They just couldn't live without one another," Max said, after introducing me to Sadie and explaining the situation

"Suppose Lucy and Beckie had not happened to be in the same school," I jested, addressing myself to the two women. "What would you have done then?"

"This shows that we have a good God in heaven," Sadie returned, radiantly.

"He put the children in the same school so that we might meet."

"'A providential match,'" I observed.

"May it last for many, many years," Sadie returned, devoutly

"Say, women!" Max shouted, "you have been more than five minutes without kissing. What's the matter with you?"

At this, Sadie, with mock defiance, walked up to Mrs. Margolis, threw her arms around her, and gave her a luscious smack on the lips

"Bravo! And now you, kids!" Max commanded

With a merry chuckle the two little girls flew into each other's arms and kissed. Lucy had dark hair like Dora's, and Beckie flaxen hair like Sadie's, so when their heads were close together they were an amusing reduced copy of their mothers as these had looked embracing and kissing a minute before

Max often dropped in to see me at my factory, and when I was not busy we would talk of my cloaks, of his instalment business, or of women. Women were his great topic of conversation, as usual. But then these talks of his no longer found a ready listener in me. Now, that I knew his wife, they jarred on me. A decided change had come over me in this respect. I remember it vividly. It was as if his lewd discourses desecrated her name and thereby offended me. It may be interesting to note, however, that he never took up this kind of topics when we were in his house, not even when his wife was out

Sometimes I would have supper at his house. More often, however—usually on Monday, when Max seldom went to the dance-halls—I would come after supper and spend the rest of the evening there. Sometimes the Shorniks would drop in—Sadie, her husband, and Beckie. Ben Shornik and Max would play a game of pinochle, while I, who never cared for cards, would chat with the women or entertain them by entertaining the children. Ben—as I came into the habit of calling him—was a spare little man with an extremely high forehead. He was an insurance-collector and only one degree less illiterate than Max; but because he had the "forehead of a learned man," and because it was his business to go from house to house with a long, thick book under his arm, he affected longish hair, flowing black neckties, and a certain pomposity of manner. One of his ways of being tremendously American was to snap his fingers ferociously and to say, "I don't care a continental!" or, "One, two, three, and there you are!" The latter exclamation he would be continually murmuring to himself when he was absorbed in pinochle.

CHAPTER V

ONE evening, when the Shorniks and I were at Max's house, and Max and Ben were having their game of pinochle, the conversation between the women and myself turned upon Dora's efforts to obtain education through her little daughter. Encouraged by Sadie and myself, Dora let herself loose and told us much of Lucy's history, or, rather, of her own history as Lucy's mother. In her crude, lumbering way and with flushed cheeks she talked with profound frankness and quaint introspective insight, in the manner of one touching upon things that are enshined in innermost recesses of one's soul

She depicted the thrills of joyous surprise with which she had watched Lucy, in her infancy, master the beginnings of speech. Sometimes her delight would be accompanied by something akin to fright. There had been moments when it all seemed unreal and weird

"The little thing seemed to be a stranger to me," she said. "Or else, she did not seem to be a human being at all."

The next moment she would recognize her, as it were, and then she would kiss and yearn over her in a mad rush of passion

The day when she took Lucy to school—about two years before—was one of the greatest days in Dora's life. She would then watch her learn to associate written signs with spoken words as she had once watched her learn to speak.

But that was not all. She became jealous of the child. She herself had never been taught to read even Hebrew or Yiddish, much less a Gentile language, while here, lo and behold! her little girl possessed a Gentile book and was learning to read it. She was getting education, her child, just like the daughter of the landlord of the house in Russia in which Dora had grown up

"C-a-t—cat," Lucy would spell out. "R-a-t—rat. M-a-t—mat."

And poor Dora would watch the performance with mixed joy and envy and exclamations like: "What do you think of that snip of a thing! Did you ever?"

Lucy's school-reader achievements stirred a novel feeling of rivalry in Dora's breast. When the little girl could spell half a dozen English words she hated herself for her inferiority to her

"The idea of that kitten getting ahead of me! Why, it worried the life out of me!" she said. "You may think it foolish, but I couldn't help it. I kept saying to myself, 'She'll grow up and be an educated American lady and she'll be ashamed to walk in the street with me.' Don't we see things like that? People will beggar themselves to send their children to college, only to be treated as fools and greenhorns by them. I call that terrible. Don't you? Well, I am not going to let my child treat me like that. Not I. I should commit suicide first. I want my child to respect me, not to look down on me. If she reads a book she is to bear in mind that her mother is no ignorant slouch of a greenhorn, either."

A next-door neighbor, a woman who could read English, would help Lucy with her spelling lesson of an evening. This seemed to have established special relations between the child and that woman from which Dora was excluded

She made up her mind to learn to read. If Lucy could manage it, she, her mother, could. So she caused the child to teach her to spell out words in her First Reader. At first she pretended to treat it as a joke, but inwardly she took it seriously from the very outset, and later, under the intoxicating effect of the progress she was achieving, these studies became the great passion of her life. Whenever Lucy recited some new lines, learned at school, she would not rest until she, too, had learned them by heart.

Here are two "pieces" which she proudly recited to us: "The snow is white, The sky is blue, The sun is bright, And so are you."

"Our ears were made to hear, Our tongues were made to talk, Our eyes were made to see, Our feet were made to walk."

Her voice, as she declaimed the lines, attracted Lucy's attention, so she sent her and Beckie into the kitchen

"She doesn't know what a treasure she is to me," she said to us.
Then, after she finished the two verses, she remarked, wistfully,
"Well, my own life is lost, but she shall be educated."

"Why? Why should you talk like that, Dora?" Sadie protested, her fishy eyes full of tragedy. "Why, you are only beginning to live."

"Of course she is," I chimed in.

"Well," Dora rejoined, "anyhow, I am afraid I love her too much.
Sometimes it seems to me I am going crazy over her. I love
Dannie, too, of course.

When he happens to hurt a finger or to hit his dear little head against something I can't sleep. Is he not my flesh and blood like Lucy? Still, Lucy is different." She paused and then rose from her seat, saying, with a smile: "Wait. I am going to show you something." She went into the kitchen and came back, holding a tooth-brush in either hand. "Guess what it is."

"Two tooth-brushes," I answered, with perplexed gaiety

"Aren't you smart! I know they are not shoe-brushes, but what kind of tooth-brushes? How did I come by them? That's the question. Did I use a tooth-brush in my mother's house?"

She then told me how Lucy, coming from school one day, had announced an order from the teacher that every girl in the class must bring a tooth-brush the next morning

Sadie nodded confirmation

"Of course, I went to work and bought, not one brush, but two," Dora pursued. "I am as good as Lucy, am I not? If she is worth twelve cents, I am. And if she is American lady enough to use a tooth-brush, I am."

Lucy is not a usual name on the East Side. It was, in fact, the principal of the school who had recommended it, at Dora's solicitation. The little girl had hitherto been called Lizzie, the commonplace East Side version of Leah, her Hebrew name. Dora never liked it. It did not sound American enough, for there were Lizzies or Lizas in Europe, too. Any "greenhorn" might bear such a name. So she called on Lizzie's principal and asked her to suggest some "nicer name" for her daughter

"I want a real American one," she said

The principal submitted half a dozen names beginning with "L," and the result was that Lizzie became Lucy

Dora went over every spelling lesson with the child. It was so sweet to be helpful to her in this way. Lucy, on her part, had to reciprocate by hearing her mother spell the same words, and often they would have a spelling-match.

All of which, as I could see, had invested Lucy with the fascination of a spiritual companion

The child had not been at school many weeks when she began to show signs of estrangement from her mother-tongue. Her Yiddish was rapidly becoming clogged with queer-sounding "r's" and with quaintly twisted idioms. Yiddish words came less and less readily to her tongue, and the tendency to replace them with their English equivalents grew in persistence. Dora would taunt her on her "Gentile Yiddish," yet she took real pride in it. Finally, Lucy abandoned her native tongue altogether. She still understood her parents, of course, but she now invariably addressed them or answered their Yiddish questions in English. As a result, Dora would make efforts to speak to her in the language that had become the child's natural means of expression. It was a sorry attempt at first; but she was not one to give up without a hard struggle. She went at it with great tenacity, listening intently to Lucy's English and trying to repeat words and phrases after her. And so, with the child's assistance, conscious or unconscious, she kept adding to her practical acquaintance with the language, until by the end of Lucy's first school year she spoke it with considerable fluency

Dora tried her hand at writing, but little Lucy proved a poor penmanship-teacher, and she was forced to confine herself to reading. She forged ahead of her, reading pages which Lucy's class had not yet reached.

To take Lucy to school was one of the keen joys of Dora's existence. Very often they would fall in with Lucy's bosom friend

"Good morning, Lucy."

"Good morning, Beckie."

As she described the smiling, childishly lady-like way in which the little girls exchanged their greetings and then intertwined their little arms as they proceeded on their way together, Sadie's fishy eyes filled with tears

"Oh, how sweet it is to be a mother!" Dora said

"I should say it was," her chum and follower echoed, wiping her tears and laughing at once

There was a curious element of superstition in Dora's attitude toward her little girl. She had taken it into her head that Lucy had been playing the part of a mascot in her life

"I was a bag of bones until she was born," she said. "Why, people who are put into the grave look better than I did. But my birdie darling came, and, well, if I don't look like a monkey now, I have her to thank. It was after her birth that I began to pick up." She had formed the theory that the child was born to go to school for her mother's sake as well as her own—a little angel sent down from heaven to act as a messenger of light to her

Her story made a strong impression on me. "Max is not worthy of her," I reflected. I wondered whether she was fully aware what manner of man he was

CHAPTER VI

SOMETIMES we would go to the Jewish theater together, Max, Dora, and I, the children being left at Sadie's house. Once, when Max's lodge had a benefit performance and he had had some tickets for sale, we made up a party of five: the two couples and myself. On that occasion I met Jake Mindels at the playhouse. He was now studying medicine at the University Medical College, and it was a considerable time since I had last seen him. To tell the truth, I had avoided meeting him. I hated to stand confessed before him as a traitor to my dreams of a college education, and I begrudged him his medical books.

I took Max and Dora to see an American play. He did not understand much of what he saw and was bored to death. As for her, she took in scarcely more than did her husband, though she understood many of the words she heard, but then she reverently followed the good manners of the "real Americans" on the stage, and the sound of their "educated" English seemed to inspire her with mixed awe and envy

Once, on a Monday evening, when I called on the Margolises, I found Max out.

Dora seemed to be ill at ease in my company, and I did not stay long. It seemed natural to fear that Max, who gave so much attention to the relations between the sexes, should view visits of this kind with misgivings. His playful warnings that we should beware of falling in love with each other seemed to be always in the air, and on that evening when he was away and we found ourselves alone I seemed to hear their echo more distinctly than ever.

It had a disquieting effect on me, that echo, and I decided never to call unless Max was sure to be at home. I enjoyed their hospitality too much to hazard it rashly. Moreover, Max and Dora lived in peace and I was the last man in the world to wish to disturb it

To my surprise, however, he did not seem to be jealous of me in the least.

Quite the contrary. He encouraged my familiarities with her, so much so that I soon drifted into the habit of addressing her as Dora

The better I knew her the greater was the respect with which she inspired me. I thought her an unusual woman, and I looked up to her

It became a most natural thing that I should propose myself as a boarder.

Thousands of families like the Margolises kept boarders to lighten the burden of rent-day

The project had been trailing in my mind for some time and, I must confess, the fact that Max stayed out till the small hours four or five nights a week had something to do with it

"You would be alone with her," Satan often whispered. Still, there was nothing definitely reprehensible in this reflection. It was the prospect of often being decorously alone with a woman who inspired me with respect and interested me more and more keenly that tempted me. Vaguely, however, I had a feeling that I was on the road to falling in love with her

One evening, as I complained of my restaurant meals and of certain inconveniences of my lodgings, Max said: "Nothing like being married, Levinsky. Take my advice and get you a nice little wifey. One like mine, for instance."

"Like yours! The trouble is that there is only one such, and you have captured her." "Don't worry," Dora broke in. "There are plenty of others, and better ones, too."

"I have a scheme," I said, seriously. "Why shouldn't you people let me board with you?"

Natural as the suggestion was, it took them by surprise. For a second or two Max gazed at his wife with a perplexed air. Then he said: "That would not he a bad idea. Would it, Dora?"

"I don't know, I am sure," she answered, with a shrug and an embarrassed smile. "We have never kept boarders."

"You will try to keep one now, then," I urged

"If there were room in the house, I should be glad. Upon my health and strength I should." "Oh, you can make room," I said.

"Of course you can," Max put in, warming to the plan somewhat. "He could have the children's bedroom, and they could sleep in this room."

She held to her veto

"Oh, you don't know what an obstinate thing she is," Max said. "Let her say that white is black, and black it must be, even if the world turned upside down."

"What do you want of me?" she protested. "Levinsky may think I really don't care to have him. Let us move to a larger apartment and I'll be but too glad to give him a room."

The upshot was a compromise. For the present I was to content myself with having my luncheons and dinners or suppers at their house, Dora charging me cost price

"Get him to move to one of those new houses with modern improvements," she said to me, earnestly; "to an apartment of five light rooms, and I shall give you a room at once. The rent would come cheaper than it is now. But Max would rather pay more and have the children grow in these damp rooms than budge."

"Don't bother me. By and by we shall move out of here. All in due time.

Don't bother. Meanwhile see that your dinners and suppers are all right.

Levinsky thinks you a good cook. Don't disappoint him, then. Don't run away with the idea it's on your own account he wants to board with us. It is on account of your cooking. That's all. Isn't it, Levinsky?"

"It's a good thing to know that I am not a bad cook, at least," she returned

"But how about the profits you are going to make on him? I'll deduct them from your weekly allowance, you know," he chaffed her

"Oh no. I am just going to save them and buy a house on Fifth
Avenue."

"You ought to allow me ten per cent. for cash," I said. "She does not want cash," Max replied. "Your note is good enough."

I had been taking my meals with them a little over a month when they moved into a new apartment, with me as their roomer and boarder. The apartment was on the third floor of a corner house on Clinton Street, one of a row of what was then a new type of tenement buildings. It consisted of five rooms and bath, all perfectly light, and it had a tiny private corridor or vestibule, a dumb-waiter, an enameled bath-tub, electric and gas light, and an electric door-bell. There was a rush for these apartments and Dora paid a deposit on the first month's rent before the builder was quite through with his work.

My room opened into the vestibule, its window looking out upon a side-street. The rent for the whole apartment was thirty-two dollars, my board being five and a half dollars a week, which was supposed to include a monthly rental of six dollars for my room.

The Shorniks moved into the same house.

CHAPTER VII

MY growing interest in Dora burst into flame all at once, as it were. It happened at a moment which is distinctly fixed in my mind. At least I distinctly remember the moment when I became conscious of it

It was on an afternoon, four days after the Margolises had taken possession of the new place. The family was fully established in it, while I had just moved in. I had seen my room, furniture and all, several times before, but I had never seen it absolutely ready for my occupancy as I did now. It was by far the brightest, airiest, best-furnished, and neatest room that I had ever had all to myself. Everything in it, from the wall-paper to the little wash-stand, was invitingly new. I can still smell its grateful odor of freshness. When I was left to myself in it for the first time and I shut its door the room appealed to me as a compartment in the nest of a family of which I was a member. My lonely soul had a sense of home and domestic comfort that all but overpowered me. The sight of the new quilt and of the fresh white pillow, coupled with the knowledge that it was Dora whose fingers had prepared it all for me, sent a glow of delight through my heart

Dora's name was whispering itself in my mind. I paused at the window, an enchanted man

A few minutes later, when I re-entered the living-room, where she was counting some freshly ironed napkins, her face seemed to have acquired a new meaning. I felt that a great change had come in my attitude toward her

"Well, is everything all right?" she inquired

"First rate," I answered, in a voice that sounded unnatural to myself

Max was fussing with the rug in the parlor. The children were gamboling from room to room, testing the faucets, the dumb-waiter

"Get avey from there!" Dora shouted. "You'll hurt yourself. Max, tell Lucy not to touch the dumb-vaiter, vill you?"

"Children! Children! What's a madder vitch you?" he called out from the parlor, in English, with a perfunctory snarl. Presently he came into the living-room. "Well, are you satisfied with your new palace?" he addressed me in Yiddish. And for the hundredth time he proceeded to make jokes at the various modern "improvements," at the abundance of light, and at my new rank of "real boarder."

It is one of the old and deep-rooted customs of the Ghetto towns of Europe for a young couple to live with the parents of the bride for a year or two after the wedding. So Max gaily dubbed me his "boarding son-in-law

"Try to behave, boarding son-in-law," he bantered me. "If you don't your mother-in-law will starve you."

The pleasantry grated on me

Dora's ambition to learn to read and spell English was a passion, and the little girl played a more important part in the efforts she made in this direction than Dora was willing to admit. Lucy would tell her the meaning of new words as she had heard it at school, but it often happened that the official definition she quoted was incomprehensible to both. This was apt to irritate Dora or even lead to a disagreeable scene

If I happened to be around I would explain things to her, but she seemed to accept my explanations with a grain of salt. She bowed before my intellectual status in a general way, but since she had good reason to doubt the quality of my English enunciation, she doubted my Yiddish interpretations as well. Indeed, she doubted everything that did not bear the indorsement of Lucy's school. Whatever came from that sacred source was "real Yankee"; everything else was "greenhorn." If she failed to grasp some of the things that Lucy brought back from school, she would blame it on the child.

"Oh, you didn't understand what your teacher said," she would scold her.

"You must have twisted it all up, you stupid."

One afternoon, when business was slow and there did not seem to be anything to preclude my staying at home and breathing the air that Dora breathed, I witnessed a painful scene between them. It was soon after Lucy returned from school. Her mother wanted her to go over her last reading-lesson with her, and the child would not do so, pleading a desire to call on Beckie

"Stay where you are and open your reader," Dora commanded

Lucy obeyed, whimperingly. "Read!" "I want to go to Beckie."

"Read, I say." And she slapped her hand

"Don't," I remonstrated. "Let the poor child go enjoy herself." But it only spoiled matters

"Read!" she went on, with grim composure, hitting her on the shoulder

"I don't want to! I want to go down-stairs," Lucy sobbed, defiantly

"Read!" And once more she hit her.

My heart went out to the child, but I dared not intercede again

Dora did not relent until Lucy yielded, sobbingly

I left the room in disgust. The scene preyed upon my mind all that afternoon. I remained in my room until supper-time. Then I found Dora taciturn and downcast and I noticed that she treated Lucy with exceptional, though undemonstrative, tenderness

"Must have given her a licking," Max explained to me, with a wink

I kept my counsel

She beat her quite often, sometimes violently, each scene of this kind being followed by hours of bitter remorse on her part. Her devotion to her children was above that of the average mother. Lucy had been going to school for over two years, yet she missed her every morning as though she were away to another city; and when the little girl came back, Dora's face would brighten, as if a flood of new sunshine had burst into the house.

On one occasion there was a quarrel between mother and daughter over the result of a spelling-match between them which I had umpired and which Lucy had won. Dora took her defeat so hard that she was dejected all that evening

I have said that despite her passionate devotion to Lucy she was jealous of her. She was jealous not only of the school education she was receiving, but also of her American birth

She was feverishly ambitious to bring up her children in the "real American syle," and the realization of her helplessness in this direction caused her many a pang of despair. She was thirstily seeking for information on the subject of table manners, and whatever knowledge she possessed of it she would practise, and make Lucy practise, with amusing pomp and circumstance.

"Don't reach out for the herring, Lucy!" she would say, sternly.
"How many times must I tell you about it? What do you say?"

"Pass me the herring, mamma, please." "Not 'mamma.'"

"Pass me the herring, mother, please."

The herring is passed with what Dora regards as a lady-like gesture

"Thank you, ma'am," says Lucy

"There is another way," Dora might add in a case of this kind. "Instead of saying, 'Pass me the herring or the butter,' you can say—What is it, Lucy?"

"May I trouble you for the herring, mother?"

I asked her to keep track of my table etiquette, too, and she did. Whenever I made a break she would correct my error solemnly, or with a burst of merriment, or with a scandalized air, as if she had caught me in the act of committing a felony. This was her revenge for my general intellectual superiority, which she could not help admitting and envying

"You just let her teach you and she will make a man of you," Max would say to me.

Sometimes, when I mispronounced an English word with which she happened to be familiar, or uttered an English phrase in my Talmudic singsong, she would mock me gloatingly. On one such occasion I felt the sting of her triumph so keenly that I hastened to lower her crest by pointing out that she had said "nice" where "nicely" was in order

"What do you mean?" she asked, perplexedly

My reply was an ostentatious discourse on adjectives and adverbs, something which I knew to be utterly beyond her depth. It had the intended effect. She listened to my explanation stupidly, and when I had finished she said, with resignation: "I don't understand what you say. I wish I had time to go to evening school, at least, as you did. I haven't any idea of these things. Lucy will be educated for both of us, for herself and for her poor mamma. If my mother had understood as much as I do it would have been different." She uttered a sigh, fell silent, and then resumed: "But I can't complain of my mother, either. She was a diamond of a woman, and she was wise as daylight. But Russia is not America. No, I can't complain of my parents. My father was a poor man, but ask Max or some of our fellow-townspeople and they will tell you what a fine name he had."

She was talkative and somewhat boastful like the average woman of her class, but there was about her an elusive effect of reserve and earnestness that kept me at a distance from her. Moreover, the tireless assiduity and precision which she brought to her housework and, above all, the grim passion of her intellectual struggles created an atmosphere of physical and spiritual tidiness about her that inspired me with something like reverence.

Living in that atmosphere seemed to be making a better man of me

Attempting a lark with her, as I had done with Mrs. Dienstog and
Mrs.

Levinsky, my first two landladies in New York, was out of the question.

Needless to explain that this respectful distance did not prevent my eyes and ears from feasting upon her luxurious complexion, her clear, honest voice, and all else that made me feel both happy and forlorn in her company. Nor would she, aware as she undoubtedly was of the meaning of my look or smile, hesitate to respond to them by some legitimate bit of coquetry. In short, we often held converse in that language of smiles, glances, blushes, pauses, gestures, which is the gesture language of sex across the barrier of decorum.

These speechless flirtations cost me many an hour which I should have otherwise spent at my shop or soliciting trade. When away from the magnetic force of her presence I would attend to business with unabated intensity.

Her image visited my brain often, but it did not disturb me. Rather, it was the image of some customer or creditor or of some new style of jacket or cloak that would interfere with my peace of mind. My brain was full of prices, bills, notes, checks, fabrics, color effects, "lines." Not infrequently, while walking in the street or sitting in a street-car, I would catch myself describing some of those garment lines in the air.

And yet, through all these preoccupations I seemed to be constantly aware that something unusual had happened to me, giving a novel tinge to my being; that I was a changed man

CHAPTER VIII

MAX saw nothing. His wife was a very womanly woman with a splendid, almost a gorgeous snow-white womanly complexion, and I was a young man in whom, according to his own dictum, women ought to be interested; yet he never seemed to feel anything like apprehension about us. This man who plumed himself upon his knowledge of women and love and who actually had a great deal of insight in these matters, this man, I say, was absolutely blind to his wife's power over me. He suspected every man and every woman under the sun, yet he was the least jealous of men so far as his wife was concerned, though he loved and was proud of her. From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself on the danger of our falling in love with each other, but that was never more than a joke and, at any rate, I heard it from him far less often than that other joke of his—about my being his and Dora's son-in-law

"Look out, mother-in-law," he would say to her. "If you don't treat your son-in-law right you'll lose him."

I have said that he was proud of her. One evening, while she stood on a chair struggling with a recalcitrant window-shade, he drew my attention to her efforts admiringly

"Look at her!" he said under his breath. "Another woman would make her husband do it. Not she. I can't kick. She is not a lazy slob, is she?"

"Certainly not," I asserted

We watched her take the shade down, wind up the spring, fit the pins back into their sockets, and then test the flap. It was in good working order now

"No, she is not a slob," he repeated, exultantly. "And she is not a gossiping sort, either. She just minds her own business."

At this point Dora came over to the table where we sat. "Move along!" he said, gaily. "Don't disturb us. I am telling Levinsky what a bad girl you are. Run along."

She gave us a shy side-glance like those that had carried the first germ of disquiet into my soul, and moved away

"No, she is no slob, thank God," he resumed. He boasted of her tidiness and of the way she had picked up her English and learned to read and spell, with little Lucy for her teacher. He depicted the tenacity and unflagging ardor with which she had carried on her mental pursuits ever since Lucy began to go to school. "Once she makes up her mind to do something she will stick to it, even if the world went under. That's the kind of woman she is. And she is no mean, foxy thing, either. When she says something you may be sure she means it, if I do say so. You ought to know her by this time. Have you ever heard her say things that are not so? Or have you heard her talk about the neighbors as other women-folk will do? Have you, now? Just tell me," he pressed me.

"Of course I have not," I answered, awkwardly. "There are not many women like her."

"I know there are not. And, well, if she is not devoted to her hubby,
I don't know who is," he added, sheepishly.