house. Even the inhabitants of the garrets sniffed and
thought of turpentine. Pesach swallowed the concoction, murmuring "To
life" afresh. His throat felt like the funnel of a steamer, and there
were tears in his eyes when he put down the glass.

"Ah, that was good," he murmured.

"Not like thy English drinks, eh?" said Mr. Belcovitch.

"England!" snorted Pesach in royal disdain. "What a country! Daddle-doo
is a language and ginger-beer a liquor."

"Daddle doo" was Pesach's way of saying "That'll do." It was one of the
first English idioms he picked up, and its puerility made him facetious.
It seemed to smack of the nursery; when a nation expressed its soul
thus, the existence of a beverage like ginger-beer could occasion no
further surprise.

"You shan't have anything stronger than ginger-beer when we're married,"
said Fanny laughingly. "I am not going to have any drinking.'"

"But I'll get drunk on ginger-beer," Pesach laughed back.

"You can't," Fanny said, shaking her large fond smile to and fro. "By my
health, not."

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Can't even get _shikkur_ on it. What a liquor!"

In the first Anglo-Jewish circles with which Pesach had scraped
acquaintance, ginger-beer was the prevalent drink; and, generalizing
almost as hastily as if he were going to write a book on the country, he
concluded that it was the national beverage. He had long since
discovered his mistake, but the drift of the discussion reminded Becky
of a chance for an arrow.

"On the day when you sit for joy, Pesach," she said slily. "I shall send
you a valentine."

Pesach colored up and those in the secret laughed; the reference was to
another of Pesach's early ideas. Some mischievous gossip had heard him
arguing with another Greener outside a stationer's shop blazing with
comic valentines. The two foreigners were extremely puzzled to
understand what these monstrosities portended; Pesach, however, laid it
down that the microcephalous gentlemen with tremendous legs, and the
ladies five-sixths head and one-sixth skirt, were representations of the
English peasants who lived in the little villages up country.

"When I sit for joy," retorted Pesach, "it will not be the season for
valentines."

"Won't it though!" cried Becky, shaking her frizzly black curls. "You'll
be a pair of comic 'uns."

"All right, Becky," said Alte good-humoredly. "Your turn'll come, and
then we shall have the laugh of you."

"Never," said Becky. "What do I want wit