"He don't comes yet," Eva replied.
"Well, he's comin'," Yetta predicted. "He comes all times."
"I guess," commented Eva, "I guess Rosie Rashnowsky needs somebody shall make somethings like that mit her. In all my world I ain't never see how she makes. She don't know what is polite. She puts her on mit funny clothes und 'fer-ladies-shoes.' She is awful fresh, und"—here Eva dropped her voice to a tone proper to a climax—"she dances on organs even."
Now Yetta Aaronsohn, in the days before the Truant Officer and the Renaissance, would have run breathless blocks at the distant lure of a street organ, and would have footed it merrily up and down the sidewalk in all the apparently spontaneous intricacies which make this kind of dancing so absorbing to the performer, and so charming to the audience. Now, however, she shuddered under the shock of such depravity. School had taught her many things not laid down in the official course of study.
"Ain't that fierce?" she murmured.
Not all subjects of gossip are as confirmative as Rosie Rashnowsky that day proved herself to be. For as Yetta and Eva turned into Clinton Street, Rosie was discovered dancing madly to the strains of a one-legged hurdy-gurdy, in the midst of an envious but not emulating crowd.
"That's her," said Eva briefly. "Sooner you stands on the stoop you shall see her better."
And when the two friends carried out this suggestion and mounted the nearest steps, Eva pointed to what seemed a bundle of inanimate rags.
"It's her baby," she disapprovingly remarked. "She lays it all times on steps. Somebody could to set on it sometimes."
"It's fierce," repeated Yetta, this time with more conviction. She was herself the guardian of three small and ailing sisters, and she knew that they should not be deposited on cold doorsteps. So she picked up Rosie's abandoned responsibility, and turned to survey that conscienceless Salome.