WOMEN 455
bargain for a few minutes with the seller of fowls, and advise him not to be obstinate and to take their offers, else he will regret it later.
Suddenly a voice thunders, "The peasants are com- ing!" and they throw themselves as for dear life upon the cart-loads of produce ; they run as though to a con- flagration, get under each other's feet, their eyes glisten as though they each wanted to pull the whole market aside. There is a shrieking and scolding, until one or another gets the better of the rest, and secures the peasant's wares. Then only does each woman remember that she has customers waiting in her shop, and she runs in with a beaming smile and tells them that, as they have waited so long, they shall be served with the best and the most beautiful of her store.
By eight o'clock in the morning, when the market is over, when they have filled all the bottles left with them by their customers, counted up the change and their gains, and each one has slipped a coin into her knotted handkerchief, so that her husband should not know of its existence (one simply must! One is only human one is surely not expected to wrangle with him about every farthing?) then, when there is nothing more to be done in the shops, they begin to gather in knots, and every one tells at length the incidents and the happy strokes of business of the day. They have forgotten all the bad luck they wished each other, all the abuse they exchanged, while the market was in progress; they know that "Parnosseh is Parnosseh," and bear no malice, or, if they do, it is only if one has spoken unkindly of another during a period of quiet, on a Sabbath or a holiday.
