Children of the Ghetto

in compliments.'

'Dull indeed!' said Hannah, drawing herself up with great seriousness. 'I think you're more complimentary than you have a right to be to a married woman.'

His face fell. 'Oh, I didn't mean anything,' he said apologetically.

'So I thought,' retorted Hannah.

The poor fellow grew more red and confused than ever. Hannah felt quite sympathetic with him now, so pleased was she at the humiliated condition to which she had brought the young man from the Cape.

'Well, I'll say good-bye,' he said awkwardly. 'I suppose I mustn't ask to take you down to supper. I dare say your husband will want that privilege.'

'I dare say,' replied Hannah smiling. 'Although husbands do not always appreciate their privileges.'

'I shall be glad if yours doesn't,' he burst forth.

'Thank you for your good wishes for my domestic happiness,' she said severely.

'Oh, why will you misconstrue everything I say?' he pleaded. 'You must think me an awful Schlemihl, putting my foot into it so often. Anyhow I hope I shall meet you again somewhere.'

'The world is very small,' she reminded him.

'I wish I knew your husband,' he said ruefully.

'Why?' said Hannah, innocently.

'Because I could call on him,' he replied, smiling.

'Well, you do know him,' she could not help saying.

'Do I? Who is it? I don't think I do,' he exclaimed.

'Well, considering he introduced you to me!'

'Sam!' cried David startled.

'Yes.'

'But-' said David, half incredulously, half in surprise. He certainly had never credited Sam with the wisdom to select or the merit to deserve a wife like this.

'But what?' asked Hannah with charming naivete.

'He said-I-I-at least I think he said-I-I-understood that he introduced me to Miss Solomon, as his intended wife.'

Solomon was the name of Malka's first husband, and so of Leah.

'Quite right,' said Hannah simply.

'Then-what-how?' he stammered.

'She was his intended wife,' explained Hannah as if she were telling the most natural thing in the world. 'Before he married me, you know.'

'I-I beg your pardon if I seemed to doubt you. I really thought you were joking.'

'Why, what made you think so?'

'Well,' he blurted out. 'He didn't mention he was married, and seeing him dancing with her the whole time-'

'I suppose he thinks he owes her some attention,' said Hannah indifferently. 'By way of compensation probably. I shouldn't be at all surprised if he takes her down to supper instead of me.'

'There he is, struggling towards the buffet. Yes, he has her on his arm.'

'You speak as if she were his phylacteries,' said Hannah, smiling. 'It would be a pity to disturb them. So, if you like, you can have me on your arm, as you put it.'

The young man's face lit up with pleasure, the keener that it was unexpected.

'I am very glad to have such phylacteries on my arm, as you put it,' he responded. 'I fancy I should be a good deal froomer if my phylacteries were like that.'

'What, aren't you frooms?' she said, as they joined the hungry procession in which she noted Bessie Sugarman on the arm of Daniel Hyams.

'No, I'm a regular wrong'un,' he replied. 'As for phylacteries, I almost forget how to lay them.'

'That is bad,' she admitted, though he could not ascertain her own point of view from the tone.

'Well, everybody else is just as bad,' he said cheerfully. 'All the old piety seems to be breaking down. It's Purim, but how many of us have been to hear the-the what do you call it?-the Megillah read? There is actually a minister here to-night bare-headed. And how many of us are going to wash our hands before supper or bensh afterwards, I should like to know. Why, it's as much as can be expected if the food's kosher, and there's no ham sandwiches on the dishes. Lord! how my old dad, God rest his soul, would have been horrified by such a party as this!'

'Yes, it's wonderful how ashamed Jews are of their religion outside a synagogue!' said Hannah musingly. 'My father, if he were here, would put on his hat after supper and bensh, though there wasn't another man in the room to follow his example.'

'And I should admire him for it,' said David, earnestly, 'though I admit I shouldn't follow his example myself. I suppose he's one of the old school.'

'He is Reb Shemuel,' said Hannah, with dignity.

'Oh, indeed!' he exclaimed, not without surprise, 'I know him well. He used to bless me when I was a boy, and it used to cost him a halfpenny a time. Such a jolly fellow!'

'I'm so glad you think so,' said Hannah flushing with pleasure.

'Of course I do. Does he still have all those Greeners coming to ask him questions?'

'Oh, yes. Their piety is just the same as ever.'

'They're poor,' observed David. 'It's always those poorest in worldly goods who are richest in religion.'

'Well, isn't that a compensation?' returned Hannah, with a little sigh. 'But from my father's point of view, the truth is rather that those who have most pecuniary difficulties have most religious difficulties.'

'Ah, I suppose they come to your father as much to solve the first as the second.'

'Father is very good,' she said simply.

They had by this time obtained something to eat, and for a minute or so the dialogue became merely dietary.

'Do you know,' he said in the course of the meal, 'I feel I ought not to have told you what a wicked person I am? I put my foot into it there, too.'

'No, why?'

'Because you are Reb Shemuel's daughter.'

'Oh, what nonsense! I like to hear people speak their minds. Besides, you mustn't fancy I'm as froom as my father.'

'I don't fancy that. Not quite,' he laughed. 'I know there's some blessed old law or other by which women haven't got the same chance of distinguishing themselves that way as men. I have a vague recollection of saying a prayer thanking God for not having made me a woman.'

'Ah, that must have been a long time ago,' she said slyly.

'Yes, when I was a boy,' he admitted. Then the oddity of the premature thanksgiving struck them both and they laughed.

'You've got a different form provided for you, haven't you?' he said.

'Yes, I have to thank God for having made me according to His will.'

'You don't seem satisfied for all that,' he said, struck by something in the way she said it.

'How can a woman be satisfied?' she asked, looking up frankly. 'She has no voice in her destinies. She must shut her eyes and open her mouth and swallow what it pleases God to send her.'

'All right, shut your eyes,' he said, and putting his hand over them he gave her a titbit and restored the conversation to a more flippant level.

'You mustn't do that,' she said. 'Suppose my husband were to see you.'

'Oh, bother!' he said. 'I don't know why it is, but I don't seem to realize you're a married woman.'

'Am I playing the part so badly as all that?'

'Is it a part?' he cried eagerly.