ndoned young Rashnowsky to Miss
Gonorowsky's care, she sped down the steps, through the crowd and out
into the ring.

Rosie, though she had never seen Miss Aaronsohn before, recognized her
talent instantly, and welcomed her partnership with an ecstatic
combination of the Cake Walk and the Highland Fling. Yetta returned the
compliment in a few steps of the Barn Dance flavored with a dash of the
Irish Jig. Then eye to eye, and hands on one another's shoulders, they
fell to "spieling," with occasional Polka divertisements.

A passing stranger stopped to watch them and gave the organ-man
largesse, so that still he played, and still they danced until called
back to duty and reality by the uproar of the baby, now thrice
abandoned. For Eva Gonorowsky had gone virtuously home, feeling that
her traditions had been outraged, her friendship despised, and that her
disciple had disgraced her.

Yetta and Rosie with the heavy-headed baby followed the organ for
several blocks. They might have gone on forever like the Pied Piper's
rats, had not the howls of the youngest Rashnowsky anchored and steadied
them. When at last they had recovered breath and the proprieties, they
sat amicably down upon an alien doorstep, and went back to the
early--and in their case neglected--preliminaries of friendship.

They exchanged names, ages, addresses, the numbers of their family, and
their own places in the scale. The baby had obligingly gone to sleep,
and these amenities were carried out in due form. It seemed that they
were bound by many similarities of circumstance and fate: each was the
eldest of a family, but whereas Rosie could boast but one baby, Yetta's
mother had three. Both mothers worked at low and ill-paid branches of
the tailor's art. And both children were fatherless to all daily intents
and purposes.

"Mine papa," Yetta told her new little friend, "is pedlar-mans on the
country. Me und mine mamma don't know where he is even. From long we
ain't got no letters off of him, und no money. My mamma, she has awful
sads over it."

"Does she cry?" questioned the sympathetic Rosie, drawing her kimona
closely about her in the enjoyment of this new and promising gossip.

Yetta shook her head. "She ain't got no time she shall cry. So my papa
don't comes, und letters mit money off of him don't comes. My mamma, she
ain't got time for nothings on'y sewing. She has it pretty hard."

"My mamma is got it hard too," cried Rosie, not to be outdone.