ing pretty."

"Perhaps she has waited for some one," suggested Leibel.

Sugarman's keen ear caught the note of complacent triumph.

"You have been asking her yourself!" he exclaimed, in horror-stricken
accents.

"And if I have?" said Leibel, defiantly.

"You have cheated me! And so has Eliphaz Green--I always knew he was
tricky! You have both defrauded me!"

"I did not mean to," said Leibel, mildly.

"You _did_ mean to. You had no business to take the matter out of my
hands. What right had you to propose to Rose Green?"

"I did not," cried Leibel, excitedly.

"Then you asked her father!"

"No; I have not asked her father yet."

"Then how do you know she will have you?"

"I--I know," stammered Leibel, feeling himself somehow a liar as well as
a thief. His brain was in a whirl; he could not remember how the thing
had come about. Certainly he had not proposed; nor could he say that she
had.

"You know she will have you," repeated Sugarman, reflectively. "And does
_she_ know?"

"Yes. In fact," he blurted out, "we arranged it together."

"Ah, you both know. And does her father know?"

"Not yet."

"Ah, then I must get his consent," said Sugarman, decisively.

"I--I thought of speaking to him myself."

"Yourself!" echoed Sugarman, in horror. "Are you unsound in the head?
Why, that would be worse than the mistake you have already made!"

"What mistake?" asked Leibel, firing up.

"The mistake of asking the maiden herself. When you quarrel with her
after your marriage she will always throw it in your teeth that you
wished to marry her. Moreover, if you tell a maiden you love her, her
father will think you ought to marry her as she stands. Still, what is
done is done." And he sighed regretfully.

"And what more do I want? I love her."

"You piece of clay!" cried Sugarman, contemptuously. "Love will not turn
machines, much less buy them. You must have a dowry. Her father has a
big stocking; he can well afford it."

Leibel's eyes lit up. There was really no reason why he should not have
bread and cheese with his kisses.

"Now, if _you_ went to her father," pursued the Shadchan, "the odds
are that he would not even give you his daughter--to say nothing of the
dowry. After all, it is a cheek of you to aspire so high. As you told me
from the first, you haven't saved a penny. Even my commission you won't
be able to pay till you get the dowry. But if _I_ go I do not despair of
getting a substantial sum--t