Children of the Ghetto

'Two pounds fifteen,' said Leah, with the air of hitting it now.

Still Malka shook her head.

'Here, Michael, what do you think I gave for all this lot?'

'Diamonds!' said Michael.

'Be not a fool, Michael,' said Malka sternly. 'Look here a minute.'

'Eh? Oh!' said Michael looking up from his cards. 'Don't bother, mother. My game!'

'Michael!' thundered Malka. 'Will you look at this fish? How much do you think I gave for this splendid lot? here, look at 'em, alive yet.'

'H'm-Ha!' said Michael, taking his complex corkscrew combination out of his pocket and putting it back again. 'Three guineas?'

'Three guineas!' laughed Malka, in good-humored scorn. 'Lucky I don't let you do my marketing.'

'Yes, he'd be a nice fishy customer!' said Sam Levine with a guffaw.

'Ephraim, what think you I got this fish for? Cheap now, you know?'

'I don't know, mother,' replied the twinkling-eyed Pole obediently. 'Three pounds, perhaps, if you got it cheap.'

Samuel and David duly appealed to, reduced the amount to two pounds five and two pounds respectively. Then, having got everybody's attention fixed upon her, she exclaimed:

'Thirty shillings!'

She could not resist nibbling off the five shillings. Everybody drew a long breath.

'Tu! Tu!' they ejaculated in chorus. 'What a Metsiah!'

'Sam,' said Ephraim immediately afterwards, 'You turned up the ace.'

Milly and Leah went back into the kitchen.

It was rather too quick a relapse into the common things of life and made Malka suspect the admiration was but superficial.

She turned, with a spice of ill-humor, and saw Esther still standing timidly behind her. Her face flushed for she knew the child had overheard her in a lie.

'What art thou waiting about for?' she said roughly in Yiddish. 'Na! there's a peppermint.'

'I thought you might want me for something else,' said Esther, blushing but accepting the peppermint for Ikey. 'And I-I-'

'Well, speak up! I won't bite thee.' Malka continued to talk in Yiddish though the child answered her in English. 'I-I-nothing,' said Esther, turning away.

'Here, turn thy face round, child,' said Malka, putting her hand on the girl's forcibly averted head. 'Be not so sullen, thy mother was like that, she'd want to bite my head off if I hinted thy father was not the man for her, and then she'd schmull and sulk for a week after. Thank God, we have no one like that in this house. I couldn't live for a day with people with such nasty tempers. Her temper worried her into the grave, though, if thy father had not brought his mother over from Poland my poor cousin might have carried home my fish to-night instead of thee. Poor Gittel, peace be upon him! Come tell me what ails thee, or thy dead mother will be cross with thee.'

Esther turned her head and murmured: 'I thought you might lend me the three and sevenpence halfpenny!'

'Lend thee-?' exclaimed Malka. 'Why, how canst thou ever repay it?'

'Oh yes,' affirmed Esther earnestly. 'I have lots of money in the bank.'

'Eh! what? In the bank!' gasped Malka.

'Yes. I won five pounds in the school and I'll pay you out of that.'

'Thy father never told me that!' said Malka. 'He kept that dark. Ah, he is a regular Schnorrer!'

'My father hasn't seen you since,' retorted Esther hotly. 'If you had come round when he was sitting shiva for Benjamin, peace be upon him, you would have known.'

Malka got as red as fire. Moses had sent Solomon round to inform the Mishpocha of his affliction, but at a period when the most casual acquaintance thinks it his duty to call (armed with hard boiled eggs, a pound of sugar, or an ounce of tea) on the mourners condemned to sit on the floor for a week, no representative of the 'family' had made an appearance. Moses took it meekly enough, but his mother insisted that such a slight from Zachariah Square would never have been received if he had married another woman, and Esther for once agreed with her grandmother's sentiments if not with her Hibernian expression of them.

But that the child should now dare to twit the head of the family with bad behavior was intolerable to Malka, the more so as she had no defence.

'Thou impudent of face!' she cried sharply. 'Dost thou forget whom thou talkest to?'

'No,' retorted Esther. 'You are my father's cousin-that is why you ought to have come to see him.'

'I am not thy father's cousin, God forbid!' cried Malka. 'I was thy mother's cousin, God have mercy on her, and I wonder not you drove her into the grave between the lot of you. I am no relative of any of you, thank God, and from this day forwards I wash my hands of the lot of you, you ungrateful pack! Let thy father send you into the streets, with matches, not another thing will I do for thee.'

'Ungrateful!' said Esther hotly. 'Why, what have you ever done for us? When my poor mother was alive you made her scrub your floors and clean your windows, as if she was an Irishwoman.'

'Impudent of face!' cried Malka, almost choking with rage. 'What have I done for you? Why-why-I-I- shameless hussy! And this is what Judaism's coming to in England! This is the manners and religion they teach thee at thy school, eh? What have I-? Impudent of face! At this very moment thou holdest one of my shillings in thy hand.'

'Take it!' said Esther. And threw the coin passionately to the floor, where it rolled about pleasantly for a terrible minute of human silence. The smoke-wreathed card-players looked up at last.

'Eh? Eh? What's this, my little girl.' said Michael genially. 'What makes you so naughty?'

A hysterical fit of sobbing was the only reply. In the bitterness of that moment Esther hated the whole world.

'Don't cry like that! Don't!' said David Brandon kindly.

Esther, her little shoulders heaving convulsively, put her hand on the latch.

'What's the matter with the girl, mother?' said Michael.

'She's meshugga!' said Malka. 'Raving mad!' Her face was white and she spoke as if in self-defence. 'She's such a Schlemihl that she lost her purse in the Lane, and I found her gushing with the eyes, and I let her carry home my fish and gave her a shilling and a peppermint, and thou seest how she turns on me, thou seest.'

'Poor little thing!' said David impulsively. 'Here, come here, my child.''

Esther refused to budge.

'Come here,' he repeated gently. 'See, I will make up the loss to you. Take the pool. I've just won it, so I shan't miss it.'

Esther sobbed louder, but she did not move.

David rose, emptied the heap of silver into his palm, walked over to Esther, and pushed it into her pocket. Michael got up and added half a crown to it, and the other two men followed suit. Then David opened the door, put her outside gently and said: 'There! Run away, my little dear, and be more careful of pickpockets.'

All this while Malka had stood frozen to the stony dignity of a dingy terra-cotta statue. But ere the door could close again on the child, she darted forward and seized her by the collar of her frock.

'Give me that money,' she cried.

Half hypnotized by the irate swarthy face, Esther made no resistance while Malka rifled her pocket less dexterously than the first operator.

Malka counted it out.

'Seventeen and sixpence,' she announced in terrible tones. 'How darest thou take all this money from strangers, and perfect strangers? Do my children think to shame me before my own relative?' And throwing the money violently into the plate she took out a gold coin and pressed it into the bewildered child's hand.

'There!' she shouted. 'Hold that tight! It is a sovereign. And if ever I catch thee taking money from any one