By ridding herself of her starched collar and ribbon and hastily rearranging her hair into a coarse, dishevelled knot she was sufficiently transformed to look like a young woman of the masses to strangers. She could not go to the Palace without a hat, however, and buying one at this hour would have attracted undesirable attention. So she first went to the house of Beile, her uneducated sister. Her father’s address or full name being unknown at the prison, it would be some time before the police came to look for her at her sister’s.
Beile was a little woman of thirty with glowing dark eyes and a great capacity for tears and nagging. She resembled her parents neither in looks nor in character, and her mother often wondered “whence she came into the family.” Her husband, a man learned in the Talmud, was absorbed day and night in an effort to build up a small business in hides. As a consequence, the space under Beile’s bed was usually occupied with raw skins and the two-room apartment which they shared with a tailor was never free from odours of putrefaction.
Clara entered the room with a smile. The first thing she did was to kiss and slap Ruchele, her sister’s little girl, and to tickle her baby brother under the chin.
“Why, where is your hat?” Beile screamed in amazement.
Her own hat was a matronly bonnet which she never wore except on Saturdays, when she would put it on over her wig, tying its two long, broad ribbons under her chin.
“It blew off into the river as I was crossing the bridge,” Clara replied. “That’s what brings me here. I want you to get me a hat, Beile, but you must do it quickly.”
“Are you crazy? Whatever is the matter with you, Clara? Whoever heard of a girl taking so little care of her hat that it should drop into the water? You don’t think you are a daughter of Rothschild, do you? Did you ever!”
“That’s all right, Beile. We’ll talk it all over some other time. Every minute is of great value to me.”
Beile thought her sister was in a hurry to attend a lesson, so she started. As she reached the door, with the baby in her arms, she couldn’t help facing about again.