And when she was quite dressed for the wedding, and had put on the earrings with the coloured stones and the crowning glory of the chignon of false plaits, stuck over with little artificial white flowers, the female neighbours came crowding into the work-room boudoir to see how she looked, and she revolved silently for their inspection like a dressmaker's figure, at most acknowledging their compliments with monosyllables. She had invited them to come and admire her appearance, but by the time they came she had grown too proud to speak to them. Even the women of whose finery she wore fragments, and who had contributed to her splendour, seemed to her poor dingy creatures, whose contact would sully her embroidered petticoat. In grotesque contrast with her peacock-like stateliness, the big _tripha_ goose began to get lively, cackling and flapping about within its radius, as if the soul of Flutter-Duck had passed into its body. The moment of departure had come. The cab stood at the street-door, and a composite crowd stood round the cab. In the Ghetto a cab has special significance, and Flutter-Duck would have to pass to hers through an avenue of polyglot commentators. At the last moment, adjusting her fleecy wrap over her head like any _grande dame_ (from whom she differed only in the modesty of her high bodice and her full sleeves), Flutter-Duck discovered that there was a great rent in one part of the wrap and a great stain in another. She uttered an exclamation of dismay--this seemed to her the climax of the day's misfortunes. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" she cried, her dignity almost melting in tears. The by-standers made sympathetic but profitless noises. "Oh, double it another way," jerked Rachel from the work-table. "Come here, I'll do it for you." "Are you too lazy to come here?" replied Flutter-Duck irritably. Rachel rose and went towards her, and rearranged the wrap. "Oh no, that won't do," complained Flutter-Duck, attitudinising before the glass. "It shows as bad as ever. Oh, what shall I do?" "Do you know what I'll tell you?" said her husband meditatively: "Don't go!" Flutter-Duck threw him a fiery look. "Oh well," said Rachel, shrugging her shoulders and thrusting forward her lip contemptuously, "it'll have to do." "No, it won't--lend me your pink one." "I'm not going to have my pink one dirtied, too," grumbled Rachel. "Do you hear what I say?" exclaimed Flutter-Duck, with increasing wrath. "Give me the pink wrap! When the mother says is said!" And she looked around the group of spectators, in search of sympathy with her trials and admiration for her maternal dignity. "I can never keep anything for myself," said Rachel sullenly. "You never take care of anything." "I took care of you," screamed Flutter-Duck, goaded beyond endurance by the thought that her neighbours were witnessing this filial disrespect. "And a fat lot of good it's done me."