catechism.

Was I a seamstress? No, but I wished to become one. Had I aiver vorked
on vaistcoats? I hadn't, but I could do anything with my needle.

Perhaps the urgency of my appeal, and more probably the pressure of her
own need, weighed with the Jewess, for after reflection, and an eager
whisper from her daughter (who was looking at me with kindling eyes),
she said,

"Very vell, ve'll see what she can do."

I was then taken into a close and stuffy room where a number of girls
(all Jewish as I could see) were working on sections of waistcoats
which, lying about on every side, looked like patterns for legs of
mutton. One girl was basting, another was pressing, and a third was
sewing button-holes with a fine silk twist round bars of gimp.

This last was the work which was required of me, and I was told to look
and see if I could do it. I watched the girl for a moment and then said:

"Let me try."

Needle and twist and one of the half vests were then given to me, and
after ten minutes I had worked my first button-hole and handed it back.

The daughter praised it warmly, but the mother said:

"Very fair, but a leedle slow."

"Let me try again," I said, and my trembling fingers were so eager to
please that my next button-hole was not only better but more quickly
made.

"Beautiful!" said the daughter. "And mamma, only think, she's quicker
than Leah, already. I timed them."

"I muz call your vader, dough," said the Jewess, and she disappeared
through the doorway.

While I stood talking to the younger Jewess, who had, I could see,
formed as quick an attachment for me as I for her, I heard another nasal
and guttural voice (a man's) coming towards us from the hall.

"Is she von of our people?"

"Nein! She's a Skihoah"--meaning, as I afterwards learned, a non-Jewish
girl.

Then a tall, thin Jew entered the room behind the elderly Jewess. I had
never before and have never since seen such a patriarchal figure. With
his long grey beard and solemn face he might have stood for Moses in one
of the pictures that used to hang on the walls of the convent--except
for his velvet skull-cap and the black alpaca apron, which was speckled
over with fluffy bits of thread and scraps of cloth and silk.

He looked at me for a moment with his keen eyes, and after his wife had
shown him my work, and he had taken a pinch of snuff and blown his nose
on a coloured handkerchief with the sound of a trumpet, he put me
through another