w it goes with me."

"How goes it with you?"

"As well as an old woman has a right to expect. The Most High is good!"
Malka was in her most amiable mood, to emphasize to outsiders the
injustice of her kin in quarrelling with her. She was a tall woman of
fifty, with a tanned equine gypsy face surmounted by a black wig, and
decorated laterally by great gold earrings. Great black eyes blazed
beneath great black eyebrows, and the skin between them was capable of
wrinkling itself black with wrath. A gold chain was wound thrice round
her neck, and looped up within her black silk bodice. There were
numerous rings on her fingers, and she perpetually smelt of peppermint.

"_Nu_, stand not chattering there," she went on. "Come in. Dost thou
wish me to catch my death of cold?"

Moses slouched timidly within, his head bowed as if in dread of knocking
against the top of the door. The room was a perfect fac-simile of
Milly's parlor at the other end of the diagonal, save that instead of
the festive bottles and paper bags on the small side-table, there was a
cheerless clothes-brush. Like Milly's, the room contained a round table,
a chest of drawers with decanters on the top, and a high mantelpiece
decorated with pendant green fringes, fastened by big-headed brass
nails. Here cheap china dogs, that had had more than their day squatted
amid lustres with crystal drops. Before the fire was a lofty steel
guard, which, useful enough in Milly's household, had survived its
function in Malka's, where no one was ever likely to tumble into the
grate. In a corner of the room a little staircase began to go upstairs.
There was oilcloth on the floor. In Zachariah Square anybody could go
into anybody else's house and feel at home. There was no visible
difference between one and another. Moses sat down awkwardly on a chair
and refused a peppermint. In the end he accepted an apple, blessed God
for creating the fruit of the tree, and made a ravenous bite at it.

"I must take peppermints," Malka explained. "It's for the spasms."

"But you said you were well," murmured Moses.

"And suppose? If I did not take peppermint I should have the spasms. My
poor sister Rosina, peace be upon him, who died of typhoid, suffered
greatly from the spasms. It's in the family. She would have died of
asthma if she had lived long enough. _Nu_, how goes it with thee?" she
went on, suddenly remembering that Moses, too, had a right to be ill. At
bottom, Malka felt a real