"Ah, Reb Feive! Good Sabbath!" Rouvke returned, starting up with an anxious air and foreboding an appeal for pecuniary assistance.
"Guess what brings me, Rouven."
"How can I tell?" the host rejoined, with a forced simper. "And why should you not call just for a visit in honor of the Sabbath? You are a welcome guest. Be seated," he added, indicating his solitary chair and himself keeping his seat on the bed, which rendered the additional service of lounge.
"How dare these beggarly greenhorns beset me in this manner?" he left unsaid. "Indeed, what business have they to come to America at all?"
"Well, how are things going on in Kropovetz?" he asked, audibly. "Business is very dull here—very dull, indeed—may I not be punished for talking business on Sabbath"—
"Well, do leave business alone! You had better hear my errand, Rouven," the matchmaker said, working his fingers. "Suppose I had a shidech for you, eh?"
"A shidech?" Rouvke ejaculated, much relieved from his misgivings, only to become all of a flutter with delicious surprise.
"Yes, a shidech; and what sort of a one! You never dreamed of such a shidech, I can assure you. Never mind blushing like that. Why, is it not high time for a young man like you to get married?"
"I am not blushing at all," Rouvke protested, coloring still more deeply, and missing the sentence by which he had been about to inform himself of the fair one's name without betraying his feverish impatience.
"Well," Reb Feive resumed, with a smile, and twisting his sidelock into a corkscrew, "it would be too cruel to try your patience. Let us come straight to the point, then. I mean—guess whom—well, I mean Hanele, Peretz the distiller's Hanele! What do you think of that?" the shadchen added in a whisper, as he let go of his corkscrew, and started back in well-acted ecstasy to watch the produced effect.