“Yes, it’s wonderful how ashamed Jews are of their religion outside a synagogue!” said Hannah musingly. “My father, if he were here, would put on his hat after supper and bensh, though there wasn’t another man in the room to follow his example.”

“And I should admire him for it,” said David, earnestly, “though I admit I shouldn’t follow his example myself.  I suppose he’s one of the old school.”

“He is Reb Shemuel,” said Hannah, with dignity.

“Oh, indeed!” he exclaimed, not without surprise, “I know him well.  He used to bless me when I was a boy, and it used to cost him a halfpenny a time.  Such a jolly fellow!”

“I’m so glad you think so,” said Hannah flushing with pleasure.

“Of course I do.  Does he still have all those Greeners coming to ask him questions?”

“Oh, yes.  Their piety is just the same as ever.”

“They’re poor,” observed David.  “It’s always those poorest in worldly goods who are richest in religion.”

“Well, isn’t that a compensation?” returned Hannah, with a little sigh.  “But from my father’s point of view, the truth is rather that those who have most pecuniary difficulties have most religious difficulties.”

“Ah, I suppose they come to your father as much to solve the first as the second.”

“Father is very good,” she said simply.

They had by this time obtained something to eat, and for a minute or so the dialogue became merely dietary.

“Do you know,” he said in the course of the meal, “I feel I ought not to have told you what a wicked person I am?  I put my foot into it there, too.”

“No, why?”

“Because you are Reb Shemuel’s daughter.”

“Oh, what nonsense!  I like to hear people speak their minds.  Besides, you mustn’t fancy I’m as froom as my father.”

“I don’t fancy that.  Not quite,” he laughed.  “I know there’s some blessed old law or other by which women haven’t got the same chance of distinguishing themselves that way as men.  I have a vague recollection of saying a prayer thanking God for not having made me a woman.”

“Ah, that must have been a long time ago,” she said slyly.

“Yes, when I was a boy,” he admitted.  Then the oddity of the premature thanksgiving struck them both and they laughed.

“You’ve got a different form provided for you, haven’t you?” he said.

“Yes, I have to thank God for having made me according to His will.”

“You don’t seem satisfied for all that,” he said, struck by something in the way she said it.

“How can a woman be satisfied?” she asked, looking up frankly.  “She has no voice in her destinies.  She must shut her eyes and open her mouth and swallow what it pleases God to send her.”

“All right, shut your eyes,” he said, and putting his hand over them he gave her a titbit and restored the conversation to a more flippant level.