“Never mind the lamp!” his wife said, fixing her torpid eyes on him. “Are you crazy? Don’t mind him”—to the servant girl. The servant girl set the lamp down on the table and withdrew, her big fleshy mistress taking a seat by her son’s side.
“Go about your business,” her husband said, good-naturedly. “You are disturbing our discussion. I was just getting started when you came in and spoiled the job. Go. There may be some beggar-woman waiting for you in the kitchen.”
She made a mocking gesture without stirring, and her husband resumed his argument.
She was one of a very small number of Jewish women who attended divine service on week-days. She was the game of every woman pedlar and beggar in town, with whom she usually communed when her husband was out. When not thus occupied, buying useless bargains or listening to some poor woman’s tale of woe, she would spend much of her time in her big easy chair, dozing over a portly psalter. Her husband was perpetually quizzing her on her piety and her surreptitious bargains. On Fridays, when beggars came in troops for their pennies, the Arbitrator would sometimes divert himself by encouraging some of them to fall into line more than once.
CHAPTER XXV.
CLARA BECOMES “ILLEGAL.”
LATE the next afternoon Mme. Shubeyko called at the warden’s house with a blue silk handkerchief round her face, apparently suffering from a swollen cheek or toothache.