. I must sew bread for Esther and for my child.
I go to _Schul_ at least once each _Shabbas_, Lord--Do I not fill the
deep ten Penitential Days from _Rosh Ha Shonoh_ to _Yom Ha Kippurim_
with seeking out of heart?--He sews, he rips. The weeping of his child
is done. Long stitches, here. She has found a chair's leg to play with.
Her moist fingers clasp at the shrill wood. The wooden chair and her
soft flesh wrestle. Esther sits still. He sews.

'Her children arise, and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praiseth her;
--Many daughters have done valiantly,
But thou excellest them all.--
Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain;
But a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands;
And let her works praise her in the gates.'

II

In the door and the clang again of the bell, a boy with them. A boy they
knew--son of their neighbours--big for his years and heavy, with fat
lips, eyes clouded, hair black and low over his clouded eyes. Esther
alone saw, as he lurched in, one foot dragging always slightly.

He went for little Flora with no greeting for them: familiarly as he
knew he would find her, had come so, often.--He loves her. The man who
squats on the table and sews smiles on the boy who loves and plays with
his child.

"Hello, kid," voice of a thick throat, "look--what I got for you here."

Flora lets the chair of her late love lurch against her back, strike her
forward. She does not care. She watches two hands--grey-caked over
red--unwrap from paper a dazzle of colours, place it to her eyes on the
floor, pull with a string: it has little wheels, it moves!

"Quackle-duck," he announces.

Flora spreads out her hands, sinks on her rump, feels its green head
that bobs with purple bill, feels its yellow tail.

"Quackle-duck--yours," says the boy.

She takes the string from his hand. With shoulder and stomach she swings
her arm backward and pulls. The duck spurts, bobbing its green long head
against her leg.

She plays. The boy on his knees with soiled thick drawers showing
between his stockings and his pants plays with her.--

Meyer Lanich did not cease from work, nor his woman from silence. His
face was warm in pleasure, watching his child who had a toy and a
playmate.--I am all warm and full of love for Herbert Rabinowich:
perhaps some day I can show him, or do something for his father. Now
there was no way but to go on working, an