The Bube explained the situation in voluble Yiddish, and made Esther wince again under the impassioned invective on her clumsiness.  The old beldame expended enough oriental metaphor on the accident to fit up a minor poet.  If the family died of starvation, their blood would be upon their granddaughter’s head.

“Well, why don’t you wipe it up, stupid?” said Becky. “’Ow would you like to pay for Pesach’s new coat?  It just dripped past his shoulder.”

“I’m so sorry, Becky,” said Esther, striving hard to master the tremor in her voice.  And drawing a house-cloth from a mysterious recess, she went on her knees in a practical prayer for pardon.

Becky snorted and went back to her sister’s engagement-party.  For this was the secret of her gorgeous vesture, of her glittering earrings, and her massive brooch, as it was the secret of the transformation of the Belcovitch workshop (and living room) into a hall of dazzling light.  Four separate gaunt bare arms of iron gas-pipe lifted hymeneal torches.  The labels from reels of cotton, pasted above the mantelpiece as indexes of work done, alone betrayed the past and future of the room.  At a long narrow table, covered with a white table-cloth spread with rum, gin, biscuits and fruit, and decorated with two wax candles in tall, brass candlesticks, stood or sat a group of swarthy, neatly-dressed Poles, most of them in high hats.  A few women wearing wigs, silk dresses, and gold chains wound round half-washed necks, stood about outside the inner circle.  A stooping black-bearded blear-eyed man in a long threadbare coat and a black skull cap, on either side of which hung a corkscrew curl, sat abstractedly eating the almonds and raisins, in the central place of honor which befits a Maggid.  Before him were pens and ink and a roll of parchment.  This was the engagement contract.

The damages of breach of promise were assessed in advance and without respect of sex.  Whichever side repented of the bargain undertook to pay ten pounds by way of compensation for the broken pledge.  As a nation, Israel is practical and free from cant.  Romance and moonshine are beautiful things, but behind the glittering veil are always the stern realities of things and the weaknesses of human nature.  The high contracting parties were signing the document as Becky returned.  The bridegroom, who halted a little on one leg, was a tall sallow man named Pesach Weingott.  He was a boot-maker, who could expound the Talmud and play the fiddle, but was unable to earn a living.  He was marrying Fanny Belcovitch because his parents-in-law would give him free board and lodging for a year, and because he liked her.  Fanny was a plump, pulpy girl, not in the prime of youth.  Her complexion was fair and her manner lymphatic, and if she was not so well-favored as her sister, she was more amiable and pleasant.  She could sing sweetly in Yiddish and in English, and had once been a pantomime fairy at ten shillings a week, and had even flourished a cutlass as a midshipman.  But she had long since given up the stage, to become her father’s right hand woman in the workshop.  She made coats from morning till midnight at a big machine with a massive treadle, and had pains in her chest even before she fell in love with Pesach Weingott.