CHAPTER XI.
THE PURIM BALL.
Sam Levine duly returned for the Purim ball.

Malka was away and so it was safe to arrive on the Sabbath.

Sam and Leah called for Hannah in a cab, for the pavements were unfavorable to dancing shoes, and the three drove to the "Club," which was not a sixth of a mile off.
"The Club" was the People's Palace of the Ghetto; but that it did not reach the bed-rock of the inhabitants was sufficiently evident from the fact that its language was English.

The very lowest stratum was of secondary formation--the children of immigrants--while the highest touched the lower middle-class, on the mere fringes of the Ghetto.

It was a happy place where young men and maidens met on equal terms and similar subscriptions, where billiards and flirtations and concerts and laughter and gay gossip were always on, and lemonade and cakes never off; a heaven where marriages were made, books borrowed and newspapers read.