A passing stranger stopped to watch them and gave the organ-man largesse, so that still he played, and still they danced until called back to duty and reality by the uproar of the baby, now thrice abandoned. For Eva Gonorowsky had gone virtuously home, feeling that her traditions had been outraged, her friendship despised, and that her disciple had disgraced her.
Yetta and Rosie with the heavy-headed baby followed the organ for several blocks. They might have gone on forever like the Pied Piper's rats, had not the howls of the youngest Rashnowsky anchored and steadied them. When at last they had recovered breath and the proprieties, they sat amicably down upon an alien doorstep, and went back to the early--and in their case neglected--preliminaries of friendship.
They exchanged names, ages, addresses, the numbers of their family, and their own places in the scale. The baby had obligingly gone to sleep, and these amenities were carried out in due form. It seemed that they were bound by many similarities of circumstance and fate: each was the eldest of a family, but whereas Rosie could boast but one baby, Yetta's mother had three. Both mothers worked at low and ill-paid branches of the tailor's art. And both children were fatherless to all daily intents and purposes.
"Mine papa," Yetta told her new little friend, "is pedlar-mans on the country. Me und mine mamma don't know where he is even. From long we ain't got no letters off of him, und no money. My mamma, she has awful sads over it."
"Does she cry?" questioned the sympathetic Rosie, drawing her kimona closely about her in the enjoyment of this new and promising gossip.
Yetta shook her head. "She ain't got no time she shall cry. So my papa don't comes, und letters mit money off of him don't comes. My mamma, she ain't got time for nothings on'y sewing. She has it pretty hard."
"My mamma is got it hard too," cried Rosie, not to be outdone. "She don't know where my papa is neither. She don't know is he on the country even. She don't know _nothings_ over him. Me und my mamma we looks all times on blocks und streets und stores. On'y we couldn't to find him. Und my mamma, she works all day by factories, und by night she comes on the house und brings more work. She ain't got time for nothings neither, on'y sewing und looking fer my poor papa."
