“He was a great man.” he was saying to the grandmother.  “He could lecture for four hours together on any text and he would always manage to get back to the text before the end.  Such exegetics, such homiletics!  He was greater than the Emperor of Russia.  Woe!  Woe!”

“Woe!  Woe!” echoed the grandmother.  “If women were allowed to go to funerals, I would gladly have, followed him.  Why did he come to England?  In Poland he would still have been alive.  And why did I come to England?  Woe!  Woe’”

Her head dropped back on the pillow and her sighs passed gently into snores.  Moses turned again to his eldest born, feeling that he was secondary in importance only to the Maggid, and proud at heart of his genteel English appearance.

“Well, you’ll soon be Bar-mitzvah, Benjamin.” he said, with clumsy geniality blent with respect, as he patted his boy’s cheeks with his discolored fingers.

Benjamin caught the last two words and nodded his head.

“And then you’ll be coming back to us.  I suppose they will apprentice you to something.”

“What does he say, Esther?” asked Benjamin, impatiently.

Esther interpreted.

“Apprentice me to something!” he repeated, disgusted.  “Father’s ideas are so beastly humble.  He would like everybody to dance on him.  Why he’d be content to see me a cigar-maker or a presser.  Tell him I’m not coming home, that I’m going to win a scholarship and to go to the University.”

Moses’s eyes dilated with pride.  “Ah, you will become a Rav,” he said, and lifted up his boy’s chin and looked lovingly into the handsome face.

“What’s that about a Rav, Esther?” said Benjamin.  “Does he want me to become a Rabbi—­Ugh!  Tell him I’m going to write books.”

“My blessed boy!  A good commentary on the Song of Songs is much needed.  Perhaps you will begin by writing that.”

“Oh, it’s no use talking to him, Esther.  Let him be.  Why can’t he speak English?”

“He can—­but you’d understand even less,” said Esther with a sad smile.

“Well, all I say is it’s a beastly disgrace.  Look at the years he’s been in England—­just as long as we have.”  Then the humor of the remark dawned upon him and he laughed.  “I suppose he’s out of work, as usual,” he added.

Moses’s ears pricked up at the syllables “out-of-work,” which to him was a single word of baneful meaning.

“Yes,” he said in Yiddish.  “But if I only had a few pounds to start with I could work up a splendid business.”

“Wait!  He shall have a business,” said Benjamin when Esther interpreted.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Esther.  “The Board of Guardians has started him again and again.  But he likes to think he is a man of business.”

Meantime Isaac had been busy explaining Benjamin to Sarah, and pointing out the remarkable confirmation of his own views as to birthdays.  This will account for Esther’s next remark being, “Now, dears, no fighting to-day.  We must celebrate Benjy’s return.  We ought to kill a fatted calf—­like the man in the Bible.”