ediction."

Solomon was used to being called a "heathen" by the _Bube_. He put on
his cap and went grudgingly to the bucket of water that stood in a
corner of the room, and tipped a drop over his fingers. It is to be
feared that neither the quantity of water nor the area of hand covered
reached even the minimum enjoined by Rabbinical law. He murmured
something intended for Hebrew during the operation, and was beginning to
mutter the devout little sentence which precedes the eating of bread
when Rachel, who as a female was less driven to the lavatory ceremony,
and had thus got ahead of him, paused in her ravenous mastication and
made a wry face. Solomon took a huge bite at his crust, then he uttered
an inarticulate "pooh," and spat out his mouthful.

There was no salt in the bread.

CHAPTER II.

THE SWEATER.

The catastrophe was not complete. There were some long thin fibres of
pale boiled meat, whose juices had gone to enrich the soup, lying about
the floor or adhering to the fragments of the pitcher. Solomon, who was
a curly-headed chap of infinite resource, discovered them, and it had
just been decided to neutralize the insipidity of the bread by the
far-away flavor of the meat, when a peremptory knocking was heard at the
door, and a dazzling vision of beauty bounded into the room.

"'Ere! What are you doin', leavin' things leak through our ceiling?"

Becky Belcovitch was a buxom, bouncing girl, with cherry cheeks that
looked exotic in a land of pale faces. She wore a mass of black crisp
ringlets aggressively suggestive of singeing and curl-papers. She was
the belle of Royal Street in her spare time, and womanly triumphs dogged
even her working hours. She was sixteen years old, and devoted her youth
and beauty to buttonholes. In the East End, where a spade is a spade, a
buttonhole is a buttonhole, and not a primrose or a pansy. There are two
kinds of buttonhole--the coarse for slop goods and the fine for
gentlemanly wear. Becky concentrated herself on superior buttonholes,
which are worked with fine twist. She stitched them in her father's
workshop, which was more comfortable than a stranger's, and better
fitted for evading the Factory Acts. To-night she was radiant in silk
and jewelry, and her pert snub nose had the insolence of felicity which
Agamemnon deprecated. Seeing her, you would have as soon connected her
with Esoteric Buddhism as with buttonholes.

The _Bube_ explained the situation in volub