ay.'

'Goodness knows,' said Simon.

'Mr. Sugarman.' And she smiled nervously.

'Sugarman?' repeated Simon blankly.

'The--the--er--the matrimonial agent.'

'What impudence! Before your year of mourning is up!'

Mrs. Cohn's sallow face became one flame. 'Not me! You!' she blurted.

'Me! Well, of all the cheek!' And Simon's flush matched his mother's.

'Oh, it's not so unreasonable,' she murmured deprecatingly. 'I suppose
he thought you would be looking for a wife before long; and
naturally,' she added, her voice growing bolder, 'I should like to see
you settled before I follow your father. After all, you are no
ordinary match. Sugarman says there isn't a girl in Bayswater, even,
who would refuse you.'

'The very reason for refusing them,' cried Simon hotly. 'What a
ghastly idea, that your wife would just as soon have married any other
fellow with the same income!'

Mrs. Cohn cowered under his scorn, yet felt vaguely exalted by it, as
by the organ in St. Paul's, and strange tears of shame came to
complicate her emotions further. She remembered how she had been
exported from Poland to marry the unseen S. Cohn. Ah! how this new
young generation was snapping asunder the ancient coils! how the new
and diviner sap ran in its veins!

'I shall only marry a girl I love, mother. And it's not likely to be
one of these Jewish girls, I tell you frankly.'

She trembled. 'One of which Jewish girls?' she faltered.

'Oh, any sort. They don't appeal to me.'

Her face grew sallower. 'I am glad your father isn't alive to hear
that,' she breathed.

'But father said intermarriage is the solution,' retorted Simon.

Mrs. Cohn was struck dumb. 'He was thinking how to make the Boers
English,' she said at last.

'And didn't he say the Jews must be English, too?'

'Aren't there plenty of Jewish girls who are English?' she murmured
miserably.

'You mean, who don't care a pin about the old customs? Then where's
the difference?' retorted Simon.

The meal finished in uncomfortable silence, and Simon went off to don
his khaki regimentals and join in the synagogue parade.

Mrs. Cohn's heart was heavy as she dressed for the same spectacle. Her
brain was busy piecing it all together. Yes, she understood it all
now--those sedulous Saturday and Sunday afternoons at Harrow. She
lived at Harrow, then, this Christian, this grateful sister of the
rescued Winstay: it was she who had steadied his life; hers were those
'fat letters,' fa