ess do you think
your husband could set up here?'

'Is he not a dentist?' she inquired in reply.

Barstein turned to the busy peering flutterer.

'Would you like to be a dentist again?'

'Ah, but how shall I find achers?'

'You put up a sign,' said Barstein. 'One of those cases of teeth. I
daresay the landlady will permit you to put it up by the front door,
especially if you take an extra room. I will buy you the instruments,
furnish the room attractively. You will put in your newspapers--why,
people will be glad to come as to a reading-room!' he added smiling.

Nehemiah addressed his wife. 'Did I not say he was a genteel
archangel?' he cried ecstatically.

IV

Barstein was sitting outside a cafe in Rome sipping vermouth with
Rozenoffski, the Russo-Jewish pianist, and Schneemann the
Galician-Jewish painter, when he next heard from Nehemiah.

He was anxiously expecting an important letter, which he had
instructed his studio-assistant to bring to him instantly. So when the
man appeared, he seized with avidity upon the envelope in his hand.
But the scrawling superscription at once dispelled his hope, and
recalled the forgotten _Luftmensch_. He threw the letter impatiently
on the table.

'Oh, you may read it,' his friends protested, misunderstanding.

'I can guess what it is,' he said grumpily. Here, in this classical
atmosphere, in this southern sunshine, he felt out of sympathy with
the gaunt godly Nehemiah, who had doubtless lapsed again into his
truly troublesome tribulations. Not a penny more for the
ne'er-do-well! Let his Providence look after him!

'Is she beautiful?' quizzed Schneemann.

Barstein roared with laughter. His irate mood was broken up. Nehemiah
as a petticoated romance was too tickling.

'You shall read the letter,' he said.

Schneemann protested comically. 'No, no, that would be
ungentlemanly--you read to us what the angel says.'

'It is I that am the angel,' Barstein laughed, as he tore open the
letter. He read it aloud, breaking down in almost hysterical laughter
at each eruption of adjectives from 'the dictionary in distress.'
Rozenoffski and Schneemann rolled in similar spasms of mirth, and the
Italians at the neighbouring tables, though entirely ignorant of the
motive of the merriment, caught the contagion, and rocked and shrieked
with the mad foreigners.

'3A, THE MINORIES, E.

'RIGHT HONOURABLE ANGELICAL MR. LEOPOLD BARST