At this point Rosenblatt, who had been keeping a watchful eye upon the course of events, intervened.

“Samuel, my boy,” he said one winter night when the store was closed for the day, “you are acting the fool.  You are letting a little Slovak girl make a game of you.”

“I attend to my own business, all the same,” growled Samuel.

“You do, Samuel, my boy, you do.  But you make me sorry for you, and ashamed.”

Samuel grunted, unwilling to acknowledge even partial defeat to the man whom he had beaten more than once in his own game.

“You desire to have that little girl, Samuel, and yet you are afraid of her.”

But Samuel only snarled and swore.

“You forget she is a Galician girl.”

“She is Russian,” interposed Samuel, “and she is of good blood.”

“Good blood!” said Rosenblatt, showing his teeth like a snarling dog, “good blood!  The blood of a murdering Nihilist jail bird!”

“She is of good Russian blood,” said Samuel with an ugly look in his face, “and he is a liar who says she is not.”

“Well, well,” said Rosenblatt, turning from the point, “she is a Galician in everything else.  Her mother is a Galician, a low-bred Galician, and you treat the girl as if she were a lady.  This is not the Galician manner of wooing.  A bolder course is necessary.  You are a young man of good ability, a rising young man.  You will be rich some day.  Who is this girl without family, without dower to make you fear or hesitate?  What says the proverb?  ’A bone for my dog, a stick for my wife.’”

“Yes, that is all right,” muttered Samuel, “a stick for my wife, and if she were my wife I would soon bring her to time.”

“Ho, ho,” said Rosenblatt, “it is all the same, sweetheart and wife.  They are both much the better for a stick now and then.  You are not the kind of man to stand beggar before a portionless Slovak girl, a young man handsome, clever, well-to-do.  You do not need thus to humble yourself.  Go in, my son, with more courage and with bolder tactics.  I will gladly help you.”

As a first result of Rosenblatt’s encouraging advice, Samuel recovered much of his self-assurance, which had been rudely shattered, and therefore much of his good humour.  As a further result, he determined upon a more vigorous policy in his wooing.  He would humble himself no more.  He would find means to bring this girl to her place, namely, at his feet.

The arrival of a Saint’s day brought Samuel an opportunity to inaugurate his new policy.  The foreign colony was rigidly devoted to its religious duties.  Nothing could induce a Galician to engage in his ordinary avocation upon any day set apart as sacred by his Church.  In the morning such of the colony as adhered to the Greek Church, went en masse to the quaint little church which had come to be erected and which had been consecrated by a travelling Archbishop, and there with reverent devotion joined in worship, using the elaborate service of the Greek rite.  The religious duties over, they proceeded still further to celebrate the day in a somewhat riotous manner.