"Why did they build such a house?"
"Ba!—once upon a time! It isn't wanted nowadays."
"Why 'poor thing?' She has a stall with salt, earns a few rubles a week. Out of that she pays twenty-eight rubles a year house-tax and lives on the rest—what should a Jewess need? What can she want more? She has her winding-sheet."
I gave another look at the old woman, and really it seemed to me that she was not in need of anything. Her wrinkled skin appeared to smile at me: What should a Jewess need?
——
NO. 42
I went from house to house in their order of number, with a note-book in my hand. But from No. 41 the beadle led me to 43.
"And 42?" I ask.
"There!" and he points to a ruin in a narrow space between 43 and 41.