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“No, she don’t thinks you is greedy. Ain’t you monitors on the back of her waist? You should come up here ‘fore the childrens comes for see how her buttons stands. You go und tell her you needs that paper.”

Very diplomatically Yetta did. “Teacher,” she began, “buttoned-in-back-dresses is stylish fer ladies.”

“Yes, honey,” Miss Bailey acquiesced, “so I thought when I saw that you wear one.”

“On’y they opens,” Yetta went on, all flushed by this high tribute to her correctness. “All times they opens, yours und mine, und that makes us shamed feelings.”

Again Miss Bailey acquiesced.

“So-o-oh,” pursued Yetta, with fast beating heart; “don’t you wants you should give me somethings from paper mit writings on it so I could come on your room all times for see how is your buttoned-in-back-dresses?”

“A beautiful idea,” cried Teacher. “We’ll take care of one another’s buttons. I’ll write the card for you now. You know what to do with it?”

“Yiss ma’an. Eva tells me all times how I could come where I wants sooner you writes on papers how I is good girls.”

“I’ll write nicer things than that on yours,” said Miss Bailey. “You are one of the best little girls in the world. So useful to your mother and to the babies and to me! Oh yes, I’ll write beautiful things on your card, my dear.”

When the Grand Street car had borne Miss Bailey away Yetta turned to Eva with determination in her eye and the “paper mit writings” in her hand.

“I’m goin’ on the country for see my papa und birds und flowers und all them things what Teacher tells stands in the country. I need I should see them.”

“Out your mamma?” Eva remonstrated.

“‘Out, ‘out my mamma. She ain’t got no time for go on no country. I don’t needs my mamma should go by my side. Ain’t you said I could to go all places what I wants I should go, sooner Teacher gives me papers mit writings?”

“Sure could you,” Eva repeated solemnly. “There ain’t no place where you couldn’t to go mit it.”

“I’ll go on the country,” said Yetta.

That evening Mrs. Aaronsohn joined her neighbours upon the doorstep for the first time in seven years. For Yetta was lost. The neighbours were comforting but not resourceful. They all knew Yetta; knew her to be sensible and mature for her years even according to the exacting standard of the East Side. She would presently return, they assured the distraught Mrs. Aaronsohn, and pending that happy event they entertained her with details of the wanderings and home comings of their own offspring. But Yetta did not come. The reminiscent mothers talked themselves into silence, the deserted babies cried themselves to sleep. Mrs. Aaronsohn carried them up to bed–she hardly knew the outer aspect of her own door–and returned to the then deserted doorstep to watch for her first-born. One by one the lights were extinguished, the sewing-machines stopped, and the restless night of the quarter closed down. She was afraid to go even as far as the corner in search of the fugitive. She could not have recognized the house which held her home.

All her hopes were centered in the coming of Miss Bailey. When the children of happier women were setting out for school she demanded and obtained from one of them safe conduct to Room 18. But Teacher, when Eva Gonorowsky had interpreted the tale of Yetta’s disappearance, could suggest no explanation.

“She was with me until half-past three. Then she and Eva walked with me to the corner. Did she tell you, dear, where she was going?”

“Teacher, yiss ma’an. She says she goes on the country for see her papa und birds und flowers.”

When this was put into Jewish for Mrs. Aaronsohn she was neither comforted nor reassured. Miss Bailey was puzzled but undismayed. “We’ll find her,” she promised the now tearful mother. “I shall go with you to look for her. Say that in Jewish for me, Eva.”