babies frightened, and pit-falls set upon the stairs, the cry was
always, "Them Yonowsky devils." Leah could do nothing with them. Mr.
Yonowsky made no effort to control them, and Aaron Kastrinsky was not
always there. Not half, not a quarter as often as he wished, for Leah
promptly turned away from all his attempts to make her understand how
greatly she would gain in peace and comfort if she would but marry
him. They would move to a larger flat and he would manage the boys.
But Leah's view of life and marriage was tinged with no glory of
romance. She had no illusions, no ignorances, and she was afraid, she
told her suitor, afraid.

"But of what?" asked the puzzled Aaron. "Thou canst not be afraid of
me. Thou knowest how dear thou art to me. What canst thou fear?"

"I'm afraid of being married," was her ultimatum. She confessed that
she loved no one else--she had never, poor child, known anyone else
to love; she admitted the allurements of the larger flat and the strong
hand always ready for the twins, was delighted to go with him to
lectures at the Educational Alliance when her father could be aroused
to responsible charge of the twins, rejoiced when he prospered in the
world and exchanged the push-cart for a permanent fruit-stand--she
even assisted at its decoration--but to marry him she was afraid.
Yes, she liked him; yes, she would walk with him--and the twins--along
Grand Street in the early evening. Yes, she would wear her red dress
since he admired it; but to marry him--ah, no! Please, no! she was
afraid of being married.

Aaron was by birth and in his own country one of the learned class,
and he promptly set about supplementing Leah's neglected education.
She had lived so solitary a life that her Russian remained pure and