n aid of
wages. So does the Lenten period of the "Three Weeks," when meat is
prohibited in memory of the shattered Temples. The Ansells kept the
"Three Weeks" pretty well all the year round. On rare occasions they
purchased pickled Dutch herrings or brought home pennyworths of pea soup
or of baked potatoes and rice from a neighboring cook shop. For Festival
days, if Malka had subsidized them with a half-sovereign, Esther
sometimes compounded _Tzimmus_, a dainty blend of carrots, pudding and
potatoes. She was prepared to write an essay on _Tzimmus_ as a
gastronomic ideal. There were other pleasing Polish combinations which
were baked for twopence by the local bakers. _Tabechas_, or stuffed
entrails, and liver, lights or milt were good substitutes for meat. A
favorite soup was _Borsch_, which was made with beet-root, fat taking
the place of the more fashionable cream.

The national dish was seldom their lot; when fried fish came it was
usually from the larder of Mrs. Simons, a motherly old widow, who lived
in the second floor front, and presided over the confinements of all the
women and the sicknesses of all the children in the neighborhood. Her
married daughter Dinah was providentially suckling a black-eyed boy when
Mrs. Ansell died, so Mrs. Simons converted her into a foster mother of
little Sarah, regarding herself ever afterwards as under special
responsibilities toward the infant, whom she occasionally took to live
with her for a week, and for whom she saw heaven encouraging a future
alliance with the black-eyed foster brother. Life would have been
gloomier still in the Ansell garret if Mrs. Simons had not been created
to bless and sustain. Even old garments somehow arrived from Mrs. Simons
to eke out the corduroys and the print gowns which were the gift of the
school. There were few pleasanter events in the Ansell household than
the falling ill of one of the children, for not only did this mean a
supply of broth, port wine and other incredible luxuries from the
Charity doctor (of which all could taste), but it brought in its train
the assiduous attendance of Mrs. Simons. To see the kindly brown face
bending over it with smiling eyes of jet, to feel the soft, cool hand
pressed to its forehead, was worth a fever to a motherless infant. Mrs.
Simons was a busy woman and a poor withal, and the Ansells were a
reticent pack, not given to expressing either their love or their hunger
to outsiders; so altogether the children