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"And how much do you think I gave for them?" went on Malka triumphantly. "Two pounds ten," said Milly. Malka's eyes twinkled and she shook her head. "Two pounds fifteen," said Leah, with the air of hitting it now. Still Malka shook her head. "Here, Michael, what do you think I gave for all this lot?" "Diamonds!" said Michael. "Be not a fool, Michael," said Malka sternly. "Look here a minute."
"I have come to bring you back your clothes-brush. Thank you so much for the loan of it." "You know you're welcome, mother," said Milly, with unintentionally dual significance. The two ladies embraced. Ephraim Phillips, a sallow-looking, close-cropped Pole, also kissed his mother-in-law, and the gold chain that rested on Malka's bosom heaved with the expansion of domestic pride.
Malka's husband, Michael, and Milly's husband, Ephraim, were sitting at the table smoking big cigars and playing Loo with Sam Levine and David Brandon, who had been seduced into making a fourth.
The thoughts of both ran strongly in the direction of sensuous enjoyment, and they preferred baked potatoes, especially potatoes touched with gravy, to all the joys of the kindergarten. Isaac's ambition ran in the direction of eider-down beds such as he had once felt at Malka's and Moses soothed him by the horizon-like prospect of such a new bed.
The mattress was hard, and in her restricted allowance of space she had to deny herself the luxury of tossing and turning lest she should arouse Debby. To open one's eyes on a new day is not pleasant when situations have to be faced. Esther felt this disagreeable duty could no longer be shirked. Malka's words rang in her ears. How, indeed, could she earn a living?
The sneeze of an innocent child silences everybody who is not a blasphemer. In the general satisfaction at the unexpected solution of the situation, no one even pointed out that the actual statement to which Ezekiel had borne testimony, was an assertion of the superior knowledge of Malka's children.
He did enough for you when you were little, keeping you at school when you ought to have been out selling matches. You'll starve and come to me, that's what you'll do." "I may starve, but I'll never come to you," said Esther, now really irritated by the truth in Malka's words. What living, indeed, could she earn!
"I know it because my Simon, God bless him, was breeched the same month." Simon was Malka's eldest, now a magistrate in Melbourne. "His third wife was Kitty Green, daughter of the yellow Melammed," persisted the Rebbitzin. "I know it for a fact, because Kitty's sister Annie was engaged for a week to my brother-in-law Nathaniel."
"His first wife," put in Malka's husband, with the air of arbitrating between the two, "was Shmool the publican's eldest daughter." "Shmool the publican's daughter," said Malka, stirred to fresh indignation, "married Hyam Robins, the grandson of old Benjamin, who kept the cutlery shop at the corner of Little Eden Alley, there where the pickled cucumber store stands now."
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.
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