and he departed without having definitely broken
the negotiations. His whole week was befogged by doubt, his work became
uncertain, his chalk marks lacked their usual decision, and he did not
always cut his coat according to his cloth. His aberrations became
so marked that pretty Rose Green, the sweater's eldest daughter,
who managed a machine in the same room, divined, with all a woman's
intuition, that he was in love.

"What is the matter?" she said, in rallying Yiddish, when they were
taking their lunch of bread and cheese and ginger-beer amid the clatter
of machines, whose serfs had not yet knocked off work.

"They are proposing me a match," he answered, sullenly.

"A match!" ejaculated Rose. "Thou!" She had worked by his side for
years, and familiarity bred the second person singular. Leibel nodded
his head, and put a mouthful of Dutch cheese into it.

"With whom?" asked Rose. Somehow he felt ashamed. He gurgled the answer
into the stone ginger-beer bottle, which he put to his thirsty lips.

"With Leah Volcovitch!"

"Leah Volcovitch!" gasped Rose. "Leah, the boot and shoe manufacturer's
daughter?"

Leibel hung his head--he scarce knew why. He did not dare meet her gaze.
His droop said "Yes." There was a long pause.

"And why dost thou not have her?" said Rose. It was more than an
inquiry; there was contempt in it, and perhaps even pique.

Leibel did not reply. The embarrassing silence reigned again, and
reigned long. Rose broke it at last.

"Is it that thou likest me better?" she asked.

Leibel seemed to see a ball of lightning in the air; it burst, and he
felt the electric current strike right through his heart. The shock
threw his head up with a jerk, so that his eyes gazed into a face whose
beauty and tenderness were revealed to him for the first time. The face
of his old acquaintance had vanished; this was a cajoling, coquettish,
smiling face, suggesting undreamed-of things.

"_Nu_, yes," he replied, without perceptible pause.

"_Nu_, good!" she rejoined as quickly.

And in the ecstasy of that moment of mutual understanding Leibel
forgot to wonder why he had never thought of Rose before. Afterward he
remembered that she had always been his social superior.

The situation seemed too dream-like for explanation to the room just
yet. Leibel lovingly passed a bottle of ginger-beer, and Rose took a
sip, with a beautiful air of plighting troth, understood only of those
two. When Leibel quaffed the re