n, but she remembered that
the Head Mistress had made the same sounds to the preceding applicant,
and, where some little girls would have put their pinafores to their
eyes and cried, Fanny showed herself full of resource. As the last
little girl, though patently awe-struck, had come off with flying
colors, merely by whimpering "Fanny Belcovitch," Alte imitated these
sounds as well as she was able.

"Fanny Belcovitch, did you say?" said the Head Mistress, pausing with
arrested pen.

Alte nodded her flaxen poll vigorously.

"Fanny Belcovitch," she repeated, getting the syllables better on a
second hearing.

The Head Mistress turned to an assistant.

"Isn't it astonishing how names repeat themselves? Two girls, one after
the other, both with exactly the same name."

They were used to coincidences in the school, where, by reason of the
tribal relationship of the pupils, there was a great run on some
half-a-dozen names. Mr. Kosminski took several years to understand that
Alte had disowned him. When it dawned upon him he was not angry, and
acquiesced in his fate. It was the only domestic detail in which he had
allowed himself to be led by his children. Like his wife, Chayah, he was
gradually persuaded into the belief that he was a born Belcovitch, or at
least that Belcovitch was Kosminski translated into English.

Blissfully unconscious of the Dutch taint in Pesach Weingott, Bear
Belcovitch bustled about in reckless hospitality. He felt that
engagements were not every-day events, and that even if his whole
half-sovereign's worth of festive provision was swallowed up, he would
not mind much. He wore a high hat, a well-preserved black coat, with a
cutaway waistcoat, showing a quantity of glazed shirtfront and a massive
watch chain. They were his Sabbath clothes, and, like the Sabbath they
honored, were of immemorial antiquity. The shirt served him for seven
Sabbaths, or a week of Sabbaths, being carefully folded after each. His
boots had the Sabbath polish. The hat was the one he bought when he
first set up as a _Baal Habaas_ or respectable pillar of the synagogue;
for even in the smallest _Chevra_ the high hat comes next in sanctity to
the Scroll of the Law, and he who does not wear it may never hope to
attain to congregational dignities. The gloss on that hat was wonderful,
considering it had been out unprotected in all winds and weathers. Not
that Mr. Belcovitch did not possess an umbrella. He had two,--one of
fine