respect for Moses, though he did not know it.
It dated from the day he cut a chip of mahogany out of her best round
table. He had finished cutting his nails, and wanted a morsel of wood to
burn with them in witness of his fulfilment of the pious custom. Malka
raged, but in her inmost heart there was admiration for such
unscrupulous sanctity.

"I have been out of work for three weeks," Moses answered, omitting to
expound the state of his health in view of more urgent matters.

"Unlucky fool! What my silly cousin Gittel, peace be upon him, could see
to marry in thee, I know not."

Moses could not enlighten her. He might have informed her that _olov
hasholom_, "peace be upon him," was an absurdity when applied to a
woman, but then he used the pious phrase himself, although aware of its
grammatical shortcomings.

"I told her thou wouldst never be able to keep her, poor lamb," Malka
went on. "But she was always an obstinate pig. And she kept her head
high up, too, as if she had five pounds a week! Never would let her
children earn money like other people's children. But thou oughtest not
to be so obstinate. Thou shouldst have more sense, Meshe; _thou_
belongest not to my family. Why can't Solomon go out with matches?"

"Gittel's soul would not like it."

"But the living have bodies! Thou rather seest thy children starve than
work. There's Esther,--an idle, lazy brat, always reading story-books;
why doesn't she sell flowers or pull out bastings in the evening?"

"Esther and Solomon have their lessons to do."

"Lessons!" snorted Malka. "What's the good of lessons? It's English, not
Judaism, they teach them in that godless school. _I_ could never read or
write anything but Hebrew in all my life; but God be thanked, I have
thriven without it. All they teach them in the school is English
nonsense. The teachers are a pack of heathens, who eat forbidden things,
but the good Yiddishkeit goes to the wall. I'm ashamed of thee, Meshe:
thou dost not even send thy boys to a Hebrew class in the evening."

"I have no money, and they must do their English lessons. Else, perhaps,
their clothes will be stopped. Besides, I teach them myself every
_Shabbos_ afternoon and Sunday. Solomon translates into Yiddish the
whole Pentateuch with Rashi."

"Yes, he may know _Terah_" said Malka, not to be baffled. "But he'll
never know _Gemorah_ or _Mishnayis_." Malka herself knew very little of
these abstruse subjects beyond their names, and the