'Who is it now?' inquired Esther in amusement.
'Shosshi Shmendrik.'
'Shosshi Shmendrik! Wasn't that the young man who married the Widow Finkelstein?'
'Yes, a very honourable and seemly youth; but she preferred her first husband,' said Mrs. Belcovitch, laughing, 'and followed him only four years after Shosshi's marriage. Shosshi has now all her money—a very seemly and honourable youth.'
'But will it come to anything?'
'It is already settled; Becky gave in two days ago. After all, she will not always be young. The Tanaim will be held next Sunday. Perhaps you would like to come to see the betrothal contract signed. The Kovna Maggid will be here, and there will be rum and cakes to the heart's desire. Becky has Shosshi in great affection—they are just suited; only she likes to tease, poor little thing! And then she is so shy. Go in and see them, and the cupboard with glass doors.'
Esther pushed open the door, and Mrs. Belcovitch resumed her loving manipulation of the wig.
The Belcovitch workshop was another of the landmarks of the past that had undergone no change, despite the cupboard with the glass doors and the slight difference in the shape of the room. The paper roses still bloomed in the corners of the mirror; the cotton-labels still adorned the wall around it; the master's new umbrella still stood unopened in a corner. The 'hands' were other—but, then, Mr. Belcovitch's hands were always changing. He never employed 'union men,' and his hirelings never stayed with him longer than they could help. One of the present batch, a bent, middle-aged man with a deeply-lined face, was Simon Wolf, long since thrown over by the Labour party he had created, and fallen lower and lower till he returned to the Belcovitch workshop whence he sprang. Wolf, who had a wife and six children, was grateful to Mr. Belcovitch in a dumb, sullen way, remembering how that capitalist had figured in his red rhetoric, though it was an extra pang of martyrdom to have to listen deferentially to Belcovitch's numerous political and economical fallacies. He would have preferred the curter dogmatism of earlier days. Shosshi Shmendrik was chatting quite gaily with Becky, and held her finger-tips cavalierly in his coarse fist without obvious objection on her part. His face was still pimply, but it had lost its painful shyness and its readiness to blush without provocation. His bearing, too, was less clumsy and uncouth. Evidently to love the Widow Finkelstein had been a liberal education to him. Becky had broken the news of Esther's arrival to her father, as was evident from the odour of turpentine emanating from the opened bottle of rum on the central table. Mr. Belcovitch, whose hair was grey now, but who seemed to have as much stamina as ever, held out his left hand—the right was wielding the pressing-iron—without moving another muscle.
'Nu, it gladdens me to see you are better off than of old,' he said gravely in Yiddish.
'Thank you. I am glad to see you looking so fresh and healthy,' replied Esther in German.