“Oo’s that?” asked Bob Ford, apprehensively.

“I’ll see,” said Thomas Simmons, in reply, and he made a rush for the staircase.

Bob Ford heard him open the front door.  The he went to the window, and just below him he saw the crown of a bonnet.  It vanished, and borne to him from within the door there fell upon his ear the sound of a well-remembered female voice.

“Where ye goin’ now with no ’at?” asked the voice, sharply.

“Awright, ’Anner—­there’s—­there’s somebody upstairs to see you,” Simmons answered.  And, as Bob Ford could see, a man went scuttling down the street in the gathering dusk.  And behold, it was Thomas Simmons.

Ford reached the landing in three strides.  His wife was still at the front door, staring after Simmons.  He flung into the back room, threw open the window, dropped from the wash-house roof into the back yard, scrambled desperately over the fence, and disappeared into the gloom.  He was seen by no living soul.  And that is why Simmons’s base desertion—­under his wife’s very eyes, too—­is still an astonishment to the neighbours.

A ROSE OF THE GHETTO, By Israel Zangwill

One day it occurred to Leibel that he ought to get married.  He went to Sugarman the Shadchan forthwith.

“I have the very thing for you,” said the great marriage broker.

“Is she pretty?” asked Leibel.

“Her father has a boot and shoe warehouse,” replied Sugarman, enthusiastically.

“Then there ought to be a dowry with her,” said Leibel, eagerly.

“Certainly a dowry!  A fine man like you!”

“How much do you think it would be?”

“Of course it is not a large warehouse; but then you could get your boots at trade price, and your wife’s, perhaps, for the cost of the leather.”

“When could I see her?”

“I will arrange for you to call next Sabbath afternoon.”

“You won’t charge me more than a sovereign?”

“Not a groschen more!  Such a pious maiden!  I’m sure you will be happy.  She has so much way-of-the-country [breeding].  And of course five per cent on the dowry?”

“H’m!  Well, I don’t mind!” “Perhaps they won’t give a dowry,” he thought with a consolatory sense of outwitting the Shadchan.

On the Saturday Leibel went to see the damsel, and on the Sunday he went to see Sugarman the Shadchan.

“But your maiden squints!” he cried, resentfully.

“An excellent thing!” said Sugarman.  “A wife who squints can never look her husband straight in the face and overwhelm him.  Who would quail before a woman with a squint?”

“I could endure the squint,” went on Leibel, dubiously, “but she also stammers.”

“Well, what is better, in the event of a quarrel?  The difficulty she has in talking will keep her far more silent than most wives.  You had best secure her while you have the chance.”