On his next visit he arrived with his arms laden with choice morsels of carpentry.  He laid them on the table for her admiration.

They were odd knobs and rockers for Polish cradles!  The pink of Becky’s cheeks spread all over her face like a blot of red ink on a piece of porous paper.  Shosshi’s face reflected the color in even more ensanguined dyes.  Becky rushed from the room and Shosshi heard her giggling madly on the staircase.  It dawned upon him that he had displayed bad taste in his selection.

“What have you done to my child?” Mrs. Belcovitch inquired.

“N-n-othing,” he stammered; “I only brought her some of my work to see.”

“And is this what one shows to a young girl?” demanded the mother indignantly.

“They are only bits of cradles,” said Shosshi deprecatingly.  “I thought she would like to see what nice workmanly things I turned out.  See how smoothly these rockers are carved!  There is a thick one, and there is a thin one!”

“Ah!  Shameless droll! dost thou make mock of my legs, too?” said Mrs. Belcovitch.  “Out, impudent face, out with thee!”

Shosshi gathered up his specimens in his arms and fled through the door.  Becky was still in hilarious eruption outside.  The sight of her made confusion worse confounded.  The knobs and rockers rolled thunderously down the stairs; Shosshi stumbled after them, picking them up on his course and wishing himself dead.

All Sugarman’s strenuous efforts to patch up the affair failed.  Shosshi went about broken-hearted for several days.  To have been so near the goal—­and then not to arrive after all!  What made failure more bitter was that he had boasted of his conquest to his acquaintances, especially to the two who kept the stalls to the right and left of him on Sundays in Petticoat Lane.  They made a butt of him as it was; he felt he could never stand between them for a whole morning now, and have Attic salt put upon his wounds.  He shifted his position, arranging to pay sixpence a time for the privilege of fixing himself outside Widow Finkelstein’s shop, which stood at the corner of a street, and might be presumed to intercept two streams of pedestrians.  Widow Finkelstein’s shop was a chandler’s, and she did a large business in farthing-worths of boiling water.  There was thus no possible rivalry between her ware and Shosshi’s, which consisted of wooden candlesticks, little rocking chairs, stools, ash-trays, etc., piled up artistically on a barrow.

But Shosshi’s luck had gone with the change of locus.  His clientele went to the old spot but did not find him.  He did not even make a hansel.  At two o’clock he tied his articles to the barrow with a complicated arrangement of cords.  Widow Finkelstein waddled out and demanded her sixpence.  Shosshi replied that he had not taken sixpence, that the coign was not one of vantage.  Widow Finkelstein stood up for her rights, and even