you won't see them if you go in; they're in school, most
of 'em."

"And why aren't you at school?"

The Redeemed Son became scarlet. "I've got a bad leg," ran mechanically
off his tongue. Then, administering a savage thwack to his hoop, he set
out in pursuit of it. "It's no good calling on mother," he yelled back,
turning his head unexpectedly. "She ain't in."

Esther walked into the Square, where the same big-headed babies were
still rocking in swings suspended from the lintels, and where the same
ruddy-faced septuagenarians sat smoking short pipes and playing nap on
trays in the sun. From several doorways came the reek of fish frying.
The houses looked ineffably petty and shabby. Esther wondered how she
could ever have conceived this a region of opulence; still more how she
could ever have located Malka and her family on the very outskirt of the
semi-divine classes. But the semi-divine persons themselves had long
since shrunk and dwindled.

She found Malka brooding over the fire; on the side-table was the
clothes-brush. The great events of a crowded decade of European history
had left Malka's domestic interior untouched. The fall of dynasties,
philosophies and religions had not shaken one china dog from its place;
she had not turned a hair of her wig; the black silk bodice might have
been the same; the gold chain at her bosom was. Time had written a few
more lines on the tan-colored equine face, but his influence had been
only skin deep. Everybody grows old: few people grow. Malka was of the
majority.

It was only with difficulty that she recollected Esther, and she was
visibly impressed by the young lady's appearance.

"It's very good of you to come and see an old woman," she said in her
mixed dialect, which skipped irresponsibly from English to Yiddish and
back again. "It's more than my own _Kinder_ do. I wonder they let you
come across and see me."

"I haven't been to see them yet," Esther interrupted.

"Ah, that explains it," said Malka with satisfaction. "They'd have told
you, 'Don't go and see the old woman, she's _meshuggah_, she ought to be
in the asylum.' I bring children into the world and buy them husbands
and businesses and bed-clothes, and this is my profit. The other day my
Milly--the impudent-face! I would have boxed her ears if she hadn't been
suckling Nathaniel. Let her tell me again that ink isn't good for the
ring-worm, and my five fingers shall leave a mark on her face worse than
any of G