's coming up to town merely for the sake of the family ceremony, I
think it would be very rude to commence without him. It's no joke, a
long railway journey this weather. My feet were nearly frozen despite
the foot-warmer."

"My poor lambkin," said Malka, melting. And she patted his side
whiskers.

Sam Levine arrived almost immediately, and Leah, fishfork in hand, flew
out of the back-yard kitchen to greet him. Though a member of the tribe
of Levi, he was anything but ecclesiastical in appearance, rather a
representative of muscular Judaism. He had a pink and white complexion,
and a tawny moustache, and bubbled over with energy and animal spirits.
He could give most men thirty in a hundred in billiards, and fifty in
anecdote. He was an advanced Radical in politics, and had a high opinion
of the intelligence of his party. He paid Leah lip-fealty on his entry.

"What a pity it's Sunday!" was Leah's first remark when the kissing was
done.

"No going to the play," said Sam ruefully, catching her meaning.

They always celebrated his return from a commercial round by going to
the theatre--the-etter they pronounced it. They went to the pit of the
West End houses rather than patronize the local dress circles for the
same money. There were two strata of Ghetto girls, those who strolled in
the Strand on Sabbath, and those who strolled in the Whitechapel Road.
Leah was of the upper stratum. She was a tall lovely brunette, exuberant
of voice and figure, with coarse red hands. She doted on ice-cream in
the summer, and hot chocolate in the winter, but her love of the theatre
was a perennial passion. Both Sam and she had good ears, and were always
first in the field with the latest comic opera tunes. Leah's healthy
vitality was prodigious. There was a legend in the Lane of such a maiden
having been chosen by a coronet; Leah was satisfied with Sam, who was
just her match. On the heels of Sam came several other guests, notably
Mrs. Jacobs (wife of "Reb" Shemuel), with her pretty daughter, Hannah.
Mr. Hyams, the _Cohen_, came last--the Priest whose functions had so
curiously dwindled since the times of the Temples. To be called first to
the reading of the Law, to bless his brethren with symbolic spreadings
of palms and fingers in a mystic incantation delivered, standing
shoeless before the Ark of the Covenant at festival seasons, to redeem
the mother's first-born son when neither parent was of priestly
lineage--these privileges comb