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"Ah, that must be another pin," said Malka, with a gleam of triumph at her victory. But she did not budge. At the end of five minutes she rose solemnly, adjusted her wig and her dress in the mirror, put on her bonnet, brushed away a non-existent speck of dust from her left sleeve, put a peppermint in her mouth, and crossed the Square, carrying the clothes-brush in her hand.
Be sure that Malka had returned the clothes-brush, and was throned in complacent majesty at Milly's table; and that Sugarman the Shadchan forgave his monocular consort her lack of a fourth uncle; while Joseph Strelitski, dreamer of dreams, rich with commissions from "Passover" cigars, brooded on the Great Exodus.
I remarked a frock-coat with satin lapels behind the door; there was a dignified umbrella in the corner and a clothes-brush and a hat-brush stood on a side-table. My uncle returned in five minutes looking at his watch a gold watch "Gettin' lunch-time, George," he said. "You'd better come and have lunch with me!" "How's Aunt Susan?" I asked. "Exuberant. Never saw her so larky.
"Something like seven guineas, I believe. I could look up the bill, and let you know." "What's dat guineas? Is dat more dan a pound?" "A shilling more. Why these higher mathematics?" Spike resumed his brushing. "What a lot of dude suits youse could git," he observed meditatively, "if youse had dem jools!" He became suddenly animated. He waved the clothes-brush. "Oh, you boss!" he cried.
The char-woman, with brow darkened by soot and gloom, told him that Milly was upstairs, but that her mother had gone across to her own house with the clothes-brush. Moses's face fell. When his wife was alive, she had been a link of connection between "The Family" and himself, her cousin having generously employed her as a char-woman. So Moses knew the import of the clothes-brush.
Still, in spite of these facts, experience did show that whenever Milly's camp had outsulked Malka's, the old woman's surrender was always veiled under the formula of: "Oh Milly, I've brought you over your clothes-brush. I just noticed it, and thought you might be wanting it." After this, conversation was comparatively easy. Moses hardly cared to face Malka in such a crisis of the clothes-brush.
And when the clothes-brush was to be found she tried to brush her father's best suit on Saturdays, and once sewed on a missing button with coarse white thread. When Mr. Meredith went to church next day every female eye saw that button and the peace of the Ladies' Aid was upset for weeks.
I laid down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle's silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine, and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when I needed wholesome entertainment.
"This indifference to his broadcloth struck me at the time as peculiar, for he has such a constitutional horror of dirt that he really keeps up his muscle by the use of the clothes-brush; still, though I afterward saw him spread his Sunday beans with mustard and his Monday bacon with oil, it was not till late on the latter evening that I came to a just appreciation of his abnormal state.
Well, she caught cold and died, and he never could sleep at night until he took a clothes-brush to bed with him, and laid his hand upon that, which answered the purpose such was the force of habit."
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