ve the law on you." Thus Mrs. Jacobs; to the
gratification of the resident populace.

Mrs. Isaacs and Mrs. Jacobs rarely quarrelled with each other, uniting
rather in opposition to the rest of the Square. They were English, quite
English, their grandfather having been born in Dresden; and they gave
themselves airs in consequence, and called their _kinder_ "children,"
which annoyed those neighbors who found a larger admixture of Yiddish
necessary for conversation. These very _kinder_, again, attained
considerable importance among their school-fellows by refusing to
pronounce the guttural "ch" of the Hebrew otherwise than as an English
"k."

"Summons me, indeed," laughed back Mrs. Isaacs. "A fat lot I'd care for
that. You'd jolly soon expose your character to the magistrate.
Everybody knows what _you_ are."

"Your mother!" retorted Mrs. Jacobs mechanically; the elliptical method
of expression being greatly in vogue for conversation of a loud
character. Quick as lightning came the parrying stroke.

"Yah! And what was your father, I should like to know?"

Mrs. Isaacs had no sooner made this inquiry than she became conscious of
an environment of suppressed laughter; Mrs. Jacobs awoke to the
situation a second later, and the two women stood suddenly dumbfounded,
petrified, with arms akimbo, staring at each other.

The wise, if apocryphal, Ecclesiasticus, sagely and pithily remarked,
many centuries before modern civilization was invented: Jest not with a
rude man lest thy ancestors be disgraced. To this day the oriental
methods of insult have survived in the Ghetto. The dead past is never
allowed to bury its dead; the genealogical dust-heap is always liable to
be raked up, and even innocuous ancestors may be traduced to the third
and fourth generation.

Now it so happened that Mrs. Isaacs and Mrs. Jacobs were sisters. And
when it dawned upon them into what dilemma their automatic methods of
carte and tierce had inveigled them, they were frozen with confusion.
They retired crestfallen to their respective parlors, and sported their
oaks. The resources of repartee were dried up for the moment. Relatives
are unduly handicapped in these verbal duels; especially relatives with
the same mother and father.

Presently Mrs. Isaacs reappeared. She had thought of something she ought
to have said. She went up to her sister's closed door, and shouted into
the key-hole: "None of my children ever had bandy-legs!"

Almost immediatel