"Yes, I always wonder how they can understand one another," said Mrs.
Belcovitch, "with their _chatuchayacatigewesepoopa_." She laughed
heartily over her onomatopoetic addition to the Yiddish vocabulary,
screwing up her nose to give it due effect. She was a small
sickly-looking woman, with black eyes, and shrivelled skin, and the wig
without which no virtuous wife is complete. For a married woman must
sacrifice her tresses on the altar of home, lest she snare other men
with such sensuous baits. As a rule, she enters into the spirit of the
self-denying ordinance so enthusiastically as to become hideous hastily
in every other respect. It is forgotten that a husband is also a man.
Mrs. Belcovitch's head was not completely shaven and shorn, for a lower
stratum of an unmatched shade of brown peeped out in front of the
_shaitel_, not even coinciding as to the route of the central parting.

Meantime Pesach Weingott and Alte (Fanny) Belcovitch held each other's
hand, guiltily conscious of Batavian corpuscles in the young man's
blood. Pesach had a Dutch uncle, but as he had never talked like him
Alte alone knew. Alte wasn't her real name, by the way, and Alte was the
last person in the world to know what it was. She was the Belcovitches'
first successful child; the others all died before she was born. Driven
frantic by a fate crueller than barrenness, the Belcovitches consulted
an old Polish Rabbi, who told them they displayed too much fond
solicitude for their children, provoking Heaven thereby; in future, they
were to let no one but themselves know their next child's name, and
never to whisper it till the child was safely married. In such wise,
Heaven would not be incessantly reminded of the existence of their dear
one, and would not go out of its way to castigate them. The ruse
succeeded, and Alte was anxiously waiting to change both her names under
the _Chuppah_, and to gratify her life-long curiosity on the subject.
Meantime, her mother had been calling her "Alte," or "old 'un," which
sounded endearing to the child, but grated on the woman arriving ever
nearer to the years of discretion. Occasionally, Mrs. Belcovitch
succumbed to the prevailing tendency, and called her "Fanny," just as
she sometimes thought of herself as Mrs. Belcovitch, though her name
was Kosminski. When Alte first went to school in London, the Head
Mistress said, "What's your name?" The little "old 'un" had not
sufficient English to understand the questio