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394 394 FL UTTER-D Ui 'A',

CHAPTER IV.

POOR FLUTTER-DUCK.

" Her cap blew oft", her gown blew up, And a whirlwind cleared the larder."

— Tennyson : The Goose.

It was New Year's Eve.

In the Ghetto, where " the evening and the morning are one day," New Year's Eve is at its height at noon. The muddy market-places roar, and the joyous medley of squeezing humanity moves slowly through the crush of mongers, pickpockets, and beggars. It is one of those festival occasions on which even those who have migrated from the Ghetto gravitate back to purchase those dainties whereof the heathen have not the secret, and to look again upon the old familiar scene. There is a stir of good-will and gaiety, a reconciliation of old feuds in view of the solemn season of repentance, and a washing-down of enmi- ties in rum.

At the point where the two main market-streets met, a grey-haired elderly woman stood and begged.

Poor Flutter-Duck !

Her husband dead, after a protracted illness that frittered away his savings ; her daughter lost ; her home a mattress in the corner of a strange family's garret ; her faded pretti- ness turned to ugliness : her figure thin and wasted ; her yellow-wrinkled face framed in a frowsy shawl ; her clothes tattered and flimsy ; Flutter-Duck stood and schnorred.

But Flutter- Duck did not do well. Her feather-head was not equal to the demands of her profession. She had selected what was ostensibly the coign of most vantage,