h a man?"

The arm of the specially invited young man was round her as she spoke.

"Don't make _schnecks_," said Fanny.

"It's not affectation. I mean it. What's the good of the men who visit
father? There isn't a gentleman among them."

"Ah, wait till I win on the lottery," said the special young man.

"Then, vy not take another eighth of a ticket?" inquired Sugarman the
_Shadchan_, who seemed to spring from the other end of the room. He was
one of the greatest Talmudists in London--a lean, hungry-looking man,
sharp of feature and acute of intellect. "Look at Mrs. Robinson--I've
just won her over twenty pounds, and she only gave me two pounds for
myself. I call it a _cherpah_--a shame."

"Yes, but you stole another two pounds," said Becky.

"How do you know?" said Sugarman startled.

Becky winked and shook her head sapiently. "Never _you_ mind."

The published list of the winning numbers was so complex in construction
that Sugarman had ample opportunities of bewildering his clients.

"I von't sell you no more tickets," said Sugarman with righteous
indignation.

"A fat lot I care," said Becky, tossing her curls.

"Thou carest for nothing," said Mrs. Belcovitch, seizing the opportunity
for maternal admonition. "Thou hast not even brought me my medicine
to-night. Thou wilt find, it on the chest of drawers in the bedroom."

Becky shook herself impatiently.

"I will go," said the special young man.

"No, it is not beautiful that a young man shall go into my bedroom in my
absence," said Mrs. Belcovitch blushing.

Becky left the room.

"Thou knowest," said Mrs. Belcovitch, addressing herself to the special
young man, "I suffer greatly from my legs. One is a thick one, and one a
thin one."

The young man sighed sympathetically.

"Whence comes it?" he asked.

"Do I know? I was born so. My poor lambkin (this was the way Mrs.
Belcovitch always referred to her dead mother) had well-matched legs. If
I had Aristotle's head I might be able to find out why my legs are
inferior. And so one goes about."

The reverence for Aristotle enshrined in Yiddish idiom is probably due
to his being taken by the vulgar for a Jew. At any rate the theory that
Aristotle's philosophy was Jewish was advanced by the mediaeval poet,
Jehuda Halevi, and sustained by Maimonides. The legend runs that when
Alexander went to Palestine, Aristotle was in his train. At Jerusalem
the philosopher had sight of King Solomon's manuscripts, and