"What are you crying about, foolish face that you are!" Mrs. Kavarsky fired out. "Another woman would thank God for having at last got rid of the lump of leavened bread. What say you, rabbi? A rowdy, a sinner of Israel, a _regely loifer_, may no good Jew know him! _Never min'_, the Name, be It blessed, will send you your destined one, and a fine, learned, respectable man, too," she added significantly. Her words had an instantaneous effect. Gitl at once composed herself, and fell to drying her eyes. Quick to catch Mrs. Kavarsky's hint, the rabbi's wife took her aside and asked eagerly: "Why, has she got a suitor?" "What is the _differentz_? You need not fear; when there is a wedding canopy I shall employ no other man than your husband," was Mrs. Kavarsky's self-important but good-natured reply. CHAPTER X. A DEFEATED VICTOR. When Gitl, accompanied by her friend, reached home, they were followed into the former's apartments by a batch of neighbours, one of them with Joey in tow. The moment the young woman found herself in her kitchen she collapsed, sinking down on the lounge. The room seemed to have assumed a novel aspect, which brought home to her afresh that the bond between her and Jake was now at last broken forever and beyond repair. The appalling fact was still further accentuated in her consciousness when she caught sight of the boy. "Joeyelé! Joeyinké! Birdie! Little kitten!"--with which she seized him in her arms, and, kissing him all over, burst into tears. Then shaking with the child backward and forward, and intoning her words as Jewish women do over a grave, she went on: "Ai, you have no papa any more, Joeyelé! Yoselé, little crown, you will never see him again! He is dead, _taté_ is!" Whereupon Yoselé, following his mother's example, let loose his stentorian voice. "_Shurr-r up!_" Mrs. Kavarsky whispered, stamping her foot. "You want Mr. Bernstein to leave you, too, do you? No more is wanted than that he should get wind of your crying." "Nobody will tell him," one of the neighbours put in, resentfully. "But, _anyhull_, what is the _used_ crying?"