be a little kind to him?”

“Did you chop me some herring and onions?” he interrupted harshly.

She flushed with conscious guilt. Again she wondered why ugly things and ugly smells so sickened her.

“What don’t you forget?” His voice hammered upon her ears. “No care lays in your head. You’re only dreaming in the air.”

Her compassion was swept away in a wave of revolt that left her trembling. “I can’t no more stand it from you! Get yourself somebody else!” She was surprised at her sudden spirit.

“You big mouth, you! That’s your thanks for saving you from hunger.”

“Two years already I’m working the nails off my fingers and you didn’t give me a cent.”

“Beggerin! Money yet, you want? The minute you get enough to eat you turn up your head with freshness. Are you used to anything from home? What were you out there in Savel? The dirt under people’s feet. You’re already forgetting how you came off from the ship—a bundle of rags full of holes. If you lived in Russia a hundred years would you have lived to wear a pair of new shoes on your feet?”

“Other girls come naked and with nothing to America and they work themselves up. Everybody gets wages in America—”

“Americanerin! Didn’t I spend out enough money on your ship-ticket to have a little use from you? A thunder should strike you!”

Shenah Pessah’s eyes flamed. Her broken finger-nails pierced the callous flesh of her hands. So this was the end—the awakening of her dreams of America! Her memory went back to the time her ship-ticket came. In her simple faith she had really believed that they wanted her—her father’s brother and his wife who had come to the new world before ever she was born. She thought they wanted to give her a chance for happiness, for life and love. And then she came—to find the paralytic aunt—housework—janitor’s drudgery. Even after her aunt’s death, she had gone on uncomplainingly, till her uncle’s nagging had worn down her last shred of self-control.

“It’s the last time you’ll holler on me!” she cried. “You’ll never see my face again if I got to go begging in the street.” Seizing her shawl, she rushed out. “Woe is me! Bitter is me! For what is my life? Why didn’t the ship go under and drown me before I came to America?”

Through the streets, like a maddened 

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