While this little conversation was taking place, Muriel had roused again, but this time her eyes were fastened upon little Loney, who had begun to wax some threads for the shoemaker. This was a task that he delighted in doing. He had been told that it was a great help to the kind old man. Muriel, after staring at the child, asked what his name was. The little fellow looked at her in a vague manner as he said:
“Loney, lady. Just Loney. That’s all the name I know.”
As the pretty, though vague, eyes were raised to hers, Muriel gave a start, saying to herself:
“Those eyes! That look in them. It is he without a doubt.”
The hardened woman gave a deep sob which, with Dora’s calm refusal of all he offered her, made John angry, and he said, roughly shaking her at the same time:
“What’s the matter with you, you idiot?”
“Nothing,” replied she, “only my sins are finding me out. That is all.”
Further conversation was checked by the arrival of Morris Goldberg, who came quietly down the cellar-steps to his shop.
The old man wore his leather apron, and had his sleeves rolled to his elbows, thus showing a pair of brawny arms and toil-roughened hands. In one of them he carried a pair of old shoes to be mended. With unconscious dignity the old man advanced toward his customers, and when Dora asked, impetuously, what had kept him so long, he told her quietly that there was more bad news from Russia, from Odessa this time, where the unfortunate Jews were being butchered and driven like noxious beasts before the terrible Cossacks.
“And I must stop to say somedings to ’courage Jake Rosenblum. He’s old fader and moder are in Odessa.”