hung on to the barrow for them.  There was a short, sharp argument, a simultaneous jabbering, as of a pair of monkeys.  Shosshi Shmendrik’s pimply face worked with excited expostulation, Widow Finkelstein’s cushion-like countenance was agitated by waves of righteous indignation.  Suddenly Shosshi darted between the shafts and made a dash off with the barrow down the side street.  But Widow Finkelstein pressed it down with all her force, arresting the motion like a drag.  Incensed by the laughter of the spectators, Shosshi put forth all his strength at the shafts, jerked the widow off her feet and see-sawed her sky-wards, huddled up spherically like a balloon, but clinging as grimly as ever to the defalcating barrow.  Then Shosshi started off at a run, the carpentry rattling, and the dead weight of his living burden making his muscles ache.

Right to the end of the street he dragged her, pursued by a hooting crowd.  Then he stopped, worn out.

“Will you give me that sixpence, you Ganef!”

“No, I haven’t got it.  You’d better go back to your shop, else you’ll suffer from worse thieves.”

It was true.  Widow Finkelstein smote her wig in horror and hurried back to purvey treacle.

But that night when she shut up the shutters, she hurried off to Shosshi’s address, which she had learned in the interim.  His little brother opened the door and said Shosshi was in the shed.

He was just nailing the thicker of those rockers on to the body of a cradle.  His soul was full of bitter-sweet memories.  Widow Finkelstein suddenly appeared in the moonlight.  For a moment Shosshi’s heart beat wildly.  He thought the buxom figure was Becky’s.

“I have come for my sixpence.”

Ah!  The words awoke him from his dream.  It was only the Widow Finkelstein.

And yet—!  Verily, the widow, too, was plump and agreeable; if only her errand had been pleasant, Shosshi felt she might have brightened his back yard.  He had been moved to his depths latterly and a new tenderness and a new boldness towards women shone in his eyes.

He rose and put his head on one side and smiled amiably and said, “Be not so foolish.  I did not take a copper.  I am a poor young man.  You have plenty of money in your stocking.”

“How know you that?” said the widow, stretching forward her right foot meditatively and gazing at the strip of stocking revealed.

“Never mind!” said Shosshi, shaking his head sapiently.

“Well, it’s true,” she admitted.  “I have two hundred and seventeen golden sovereigns besides my shop.  But for all that why should you keep my sixpence?” She asked it with the same good-humored smile.

The logic of that smile was unanswerable.  Shosshi’s mouth opened, but no sound issued from it.  He did not even say the Evening Prayer.  The moon sailed slowly across the heavens.  The water flowed into the cistern with a soft soothing sound.