ss Hannah's face. "Among the Jews,"
she said, "every match is a grand _Shidduch_ before the marriage; after,
we hear another tale."

"There is a good deal in that," admitted Miriam, thoughtfully. "The
girl's family cries up the capture shamelessly. I remember when Clara
Emanuel was engaged, her brother Jack told me it was a splendid
_Shidduch_. Afterwards I found he was a widower of fifty-five with three
children."

"But that engagement went off," said Hannah.

"I know," said Miriam. "I'm only saying I can't fancy myself doing
anything of the kind."

"What! breaking off an engagement?" said Hannah, with a cynical little
twinkle about her eye.

"No, taking a man like that," replied Miriam. "I wouldn't look at a man
over thirty-five, or with less than two hundred and fifty a year."

"You'll never marry a teacher, then," Hannah remarked.

"Teacher!" Miriam Hyams repeated, with a look of disgust. "How can one
be respectable on three pounds a week? I must have a man in a good
position." She tossed her piquant nose and looked almost handsome. She
was five years older than Hannah, and it seemed an enigma why men did
not rush to lay five pounds a week at her daintily shod feet.

"I'd rather marry a man with two pounds a week if I loved him," said
Hannah in a low tone.

"Not in this century," said Miriam, shaking her head incredulously. "We
don't believe in that nonsense now-a-days. There was Alice Green,--she
used to talk like that,--now look at her, riding about in a gig side by
side with a bald monkey."

"Alice Green's mother," interrupted Malka, pricking up her ears,
"married a son of Mendel Weinstein by his third wife, Dinah, who had ten
pounds left her by her uncle Shloumi."

"No, Dinah was Mendel's second wife," corrected Mrs. Jacobs, cutting
short a remark of Mrs. Phillips's in favor of the new interest.

"Dinah was Mendel's third wife," repeated Malka, her tanned cheeks
reddening. "I know it because my Simon, God bless him, was breeched the
same month."

Simon was Malka's eldest, now a magistrate in Melbourne.

"His third wife was Kitty Green, daughter of the yellow Melammed,"
persisted the Rebbitzin. "I know it for a fact, because Kitty's sister
Annie was engaged for a week to my brother-in-law Nathaniel."

"His first wife," put in Malka's husband, with the air of arbitrating
between the two, "was Shmool the publican's eldest daughter."

"Shmool the publican's daughter," said Malka, stirred to fresh