y, the waters of affliction. Give me the children.'

'But they won't go with you. They love their step-mother.'

'Love that painted jade? They, with Jewish blood warm in their veins,
with the memory of their mother warm in their hearts? Impossible!'

He opened the door gently. 'Becky! Joe! No, don't you come, Madge,
darling. It's all right. The old lady wants to say "Good-day" to the
children.'

The two children tripped into the passage, with napkins tied round
their chins, their mouths greasy, but the rest of their persons
unfamiliarly speckless and tidy. They stood still at the sight of
their grandmother, so stern and frowning. Henry shut the door
carefully.

'My lambs!' Natalya cried, in her sweetest but harsh tones, 'Won't you
come and kiss me?'

Becky, a mature person of seven, advanced courageously and surrendered
her cheek to her grandmother.

'How are you, granny?' she said ceremoniously.

'And Joseph?' said Natalya, not replying. 'My heart and my crown, will
he not come?'

The four-and-a-half year old Joseph stood dubiously, with his fist in
his mouth.

'Bring him to me, Becky. Tell him I want you and him to come and live
with me.'

Becky shrugged her precocious shoulders. 'He may. I won't,' she said
laconically.

'Oh, Becky!' said the grandmother. 'Do you want to stay here and
torture your poor mother?'

Becky stared. 'She's dead,' she said.

'Yes, but her soul lives and watches over you. Come, Joseph, apple of
my eye, come with me.'

She beckoned enticingly, but the little boy, imagining the invitation
was to enter her bag and be literally carried away therein, set up a
terrific howl. Thereupon the pretty young woman emerged hastily, and
the child, with a great sob of love and confidence, ran to her and
nestled in her arms.

'Mamma, mamma,' he cried.

Henry looked at the old woman with a triumphant smile.

Natalya went hot and cold. It was not only that little Joseph had gone
to this creature. It was not even that he had accepted her maternity.
It was this word 'mamma' that stung. The word summed up all the
blasphemous foreignness of the new domesticity. 'Mamma' was redolent
of cold Christian houses in whose doorways the old clo'-woman
sometimes heard it. Fanny had been 'mother'--the dear, homely, Jewish
'mother.' This 'mamma,' taught to the orphans, was like the haughty
parade of Christian elegance across her grave.

'When _mamma's_ shoes are to be sold, don't forget me,' Natalya