e "Ruins" of a Sunday; and she had set up Ephraim, her
newly-acquired son-in-law, in the same line of business in the same
district. Like most things she dealt in, her son-in-law was second-hand,
having lost his first wife four years ago in Poland. But he was only
twenty-two, and a second-hand son-in-law of twenty-two is superior to
many brand new ones. The two domestic establishments were a few minutes
away from the shops, facing each other diagonally across the square.
They were small, three-roomed houses, without basements, the ground
floor window in each being filled up with a black gauze blind (an
invariable index of gentility) which allowed the occupants to see all
that was passing outside, but confronted gazers with their own
rejections. Passers-by postured at these mirrors, twisting moustaches
perkily, or giving coquettish pats to bonnets, unwitting of the grinning
inhabitants. Most of the doors were ajar, wintry as the air was: for the
Zachariah Squareites lived a good deal on the door-step. In the summer,
the housewives sat outside on chairs and gossiped and knitted, as if the
sea foamed at their feel, and wrinkled good-humored old men played nap
on tea-trays. Some of the doors were blocked below with sliding barriers
of wood, a sure token of infants inside given to straying. More obvious
tokens of child-life were the swings nailed to the lintels of a few
doors, in which, despite the cold, toothless babes swayed like monkeys
on a branch. But the Square, with its broad area of quadrangular
pavement, was an ideal playing-ground for children, since other animals
came not within its precincts, except an inquisitive dog or a local cat.
Solomon Ansell knew no greater privilege than to accompany his father to
these fashionable quarters and whip his humming-top across the ample
spaces, the while Moses transacted his business with Malka. Last time
the business was psalm-saying. Milly had been brought to bed of a son,
but it was doubtful if she would survive, despite the charms hung upon
the bedpost to counteract the nefarious designs of Lilith, the wicked
first wife of Adam, and of the Not-Good Ones who hover about women in
childbirth. So Moses was sent for, post-haste, to intercede with the
Almighty. His piety, it was felt, would command attention. For an
average of three hundred and sixty-two days a year Moses was a miserable
worm, a nonentity, but on the other three, when death threatened to
visit Malka or her little