"My own husband, dear people," she sobbed, addressing the room. "My own husband--married to me in Poland five years ago. See, I have the _Cesubah_!" She half drew the marriage parchment from her bosom. "And he won't live with me! Every time he runs away from me. Last time I saw him was in Liverpool, on the eve of Tabernacles. And before that I had to go and find him in Newcastle, and he promised me never to go away again--yes, you did, you know you did, Emanuel, love. And here have I been looking weeks for you at all the furriers and tailors, without bread and salt for the children, and the Board of Guardians won't believe me, and blame me for coming to London. Oh, Emanuel, love, God shall forgive you." Her dress was dishevelled, her wig awry; big tears streamed down her cheeks. "How can I live with an old witch like that?" asked Emanuel, in brutal self-defence. "There are worse than me in the world," rejoined the woman meekly. "Nee, nee," roughly interposed the master-furrier, who had risen from his sofa in the excitement of the scene. "It is not beautiful not to live with one's wife." He paused to cough. "You must not put her to shame." "It's she who puts me to shame." Emanuel turned to Rachel, who had let her work slip to the floor, and whose face had grown white and stern, and continued deprecatingly, "I never wanted her. They caught me by a trick." "Don't talk to me," snapped Rachel, turning her back on him. The woman looked at her suspiciously--the girl's beauty seemed to burst upon her for the first time. "He is my husband," she repeated, and made as if she would draw out the _Cesubah_ again. "Nee, nee, enough!" said the master-furrier curtly. "You are wasting our time. Your husband shall live with you, or he shall not work with me." "You have deceived us, you rogue!" put in Flutter-Duck shrilly. "Did I ever say I was a single man?" retorted Emanuel, shrugging his shoulders. "There! He confesses it!" cried his wife in glee. "Come, Emanuel, love," and she threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him passionately. "Do not be obstinate." "I can't come now," he said, with sulky facetiousness. "Where are you living?" She told him, and he said he would come when work was over. "On your faith?" she asked, with another uneasy glance at Rachel. "On my faith," he answered. She moved towards the door, with her draggle-tail of infants. As she was vanishing, he called shame-facedly to the departing children,-- "Well, Joshua! Well, Miriam! Is this the way one treats a father? A nice way your mother has brought you up!" They came back to him dubiously, with unwashed, pathetic faces, and he kissed them. Rachel bent down to pick up her rabbit-skin. Work was resumed in dead silence. CHAPTER III. FLIGHT. "The goose flew this way and flew that, And filled the house with clamour." --TENNYSON: _The Goose_.