After much haggling Belcovitch consented to give twenty pounds immediately before the marriage ceremony and another twenty at the end of twelve months.

“But no pretending you haven’t got it about you, when we’re at the Shool, no asking us to wait till we get home,” said Sugarman, “or else I withdraw my man, even from under the Chuppah itself.  When shall I bring him for your inspection?”

“Oh, to-morrow afternoon, Sunday, when Becky will be out in the park with her young men.  It’s best I shall see him first!”

Sugarman now regarded Shosshi as a married man!  He rubbed his hands and went to see him.  He found him in a little shed in the back yard where he did extra work at home.  Shosshi was busy completing little wooden articles—­stools and wooden spoons and moneyboxes for sale in Petticoat Lane next day.  He supplemented his wages that way.

“Good evening, Shosshi,” said Sugarman.

“Good evening,” murmured Shosshi, sawing away.

Shosshi was a gawky young man with a blotched sandy face ever ready to blush deeper with the suspicion that conversations going on at a distance were all about him.  His eyes were shifty and catlike; one shoulder overbalanced the other, and when he walked, he swayed loosely to and fro.  Sugarman was rarely remiss in the offices of piety and he was nigh murmuring the prayer at the sight of monstrosities.  “Blessed art Thou who variest the creatures.”  But resisting the temptation he said aloud, “I have something to tell you.”

Shosshi looked up suspiciously.

“Don’t bother:  I am busy,” he said, and applied his plane to the leg of a stool.

“But this is more important than stools.  How would you like to get married?”

Shosshi’s face became like a peony.

“Don’t make laughter,” he said.

“But I mean it.  You are twenty-four years old and ought to have a wife and four children by this time.”

“But I don’t want a wife and four children,” said Shosshi.

“No, of course not.  I don’t mean a widow.  It is a maiden I have in my eye.”

“Nonsense, what maiden would have me?” said Shosshi, a note of eagerness mingling with the diffidence of the words.

“What maiden? Gott in Himmel!  A hundred.  A fine, strong, healthy young man like you, who can make a good living!”

Shosshi put down his plane and straightened himself.  There was a moment of silence.  Then his frame collapsed again into a limp mass.  His head drooped over his left shoulder.  “This is all foolishness you talk, the maidens make mock.”

“Be not a piece of clay!  I know a maiden who has you quite in affection!”

The blush which had waned mantled in a full flood.  Shosshi stood breathless, gazing half suspiciously, half credulously at his strictly honorable Mephistopheles.

It was about seven o’clock and the moon was a yellow crescent in the frosty heavens.  The sky was punctured with clear-cut constellations.  The back yard looked poetic with its blend of shadow and moonlight.