At the sound of her uncle’s voice all her “high thoughts” fled. The mere reminder of the furnace with its ashes and cinders smothered her buoyant spirits and again she was weighed down by the strangling yoke of her hateful, daily round. It was evening when she got through with her work. To her surprise she did not feel any of the old weariness. It was as if her feet danced under her. Then from the open doorway of their kitchen she overheard Mrs. Melker, the matchmaker, talking to her uncle. “Motkeh, the fish-peddler, is looking for a wife to cook him his eating and take care on his children,” she was saying in her shrill, grating voice. “So I thought to myself this is a golden chance for Shenah Pessah to grab. You know a girl in her years and without money, a single man wouldn’t give a look on her.” Shenah Pessah shuddered. She wanted to run away from the branding torture of their low talk, but an unreasoning curiosity drew her to listen. “Living is so high,” went on Mrs. Melker, “that single men don’t want to marry themselves even to _young_ girls, except if they can get themselves into a family with money to start them up in business. It is Shenah Pessah’s luck yet that Motkeh likes good eating and he can’t stand it any more the meals in a restaurant. He heard from people what a good cook and housekeeper Shenah Pessah is, so he sent me around to tell you he would take her as she stands without a cent.” Mrs. Melker dramatically beat her breast. “I swear I shouldn’t live to go away from here alive, I shouldn’t live to see my own children married if I’m talking this match for the few dollars that Motkeh will pay me for it, but because I want to do something good for a poor orphan. I’m a mother, and it weeps in me my heart to see a girl in her years and not married.” “And who’ll cook for me my eating, if I’ll let her go?” broke out her uncle angrily. “And who’ll do me my work? Didn’t I spend out fifty dollars to send for her the ticket to America? Oughtn’t I have a little use from her for so many dollars I laid out on her?” “Think on God!” remonstrated Mrs. Melker. “The girl is an orphan and time is pushing itself on her. Do you want her to sit till her braids grow gray, before you’ll let her get herself a man? It stands in the Talmud that a man should take the last bite away from his mouth to help an orphan get married. You’d beg yourself out a place in heaven in the next world--” “In America a person can’t live on hopes for the next world. In America everybody got to look out for himself. I’d have to give up the janitor’s work to let her go, and then where would I be?” “You lived already your life. Give her also a chance to lift up her head in the world. Couldn’t you get yourself in an old man’s home?” “These times you got to have money even in an old man’s home. You know how they say, if you oil the wheels you can ride. With dry hands you can’t get nothing in America.”