The consolation of sleeping in that imaginary new bed to the possession of which Ikey was always looking forward was apparently adequate; for Esther got up from the floor and untied the loaves from her pinafore.  A reckless spirit of defiance possessed her, as of a gambler who throws good money after bad.  They should have a mad revelry to-night—­the two loaves should be eaten at once.  One (minus a hunk for father’s supper) would hardly satisfy six voracious appetites.  Solomon and Rachel, irrepressibly excited by the sight of the bread, rushed at it greedily, snatched a loaf from Esther’s hand, and tore off a crust each with their fingers.

“Heathen,” cried the old grandmother.  “Washing and benediction.”

Solomon was used to being called a “heathen” by the Bube.  He put on his cap and went grudgingly to the bucket of water that stood in a corner of the room, and tipped a drop over his fingers.  It is to be feared that neither the quantity of water nor the area of hand covered reached even the minimum enjoined by Rabbinical law.  He murmured something intended for Hebrew during the operation, and was beginning to mutter the devout little sentence which precedes the eating of bread when Rachel, who as a female was less driven to the lavatory ceremony, and had thus got ahead of him, paused in her ravenous mastication and made a wry face.  Solomon took a huge bite at his crust, then he uttered an inarticulate “pooh,” and spat out his mouthful.

There was no salt in the bread.

CHAPTER II.

THE SWEATER.

The catastrophe was not complete.  There were some long thin fibres of pale boiled meat, whose juices had gone to enrich the soup, lying about the floor or adhering to the fragments of the pitcher.  Solomon, who was a curly-headed chap of infinite resource, discovered them, and it had just been decided to neutralize the insipidity of the bread by the far-away flavor of the meat, when a peremptory knocking was heard at the door, and a dazzling vision of beauty bounded into the room.

“‘Ere!  What are you doin’, leavin’ things leak through our ceiling?”

Becky Belcovitch was a buxom, bouncing girl, with cherry cheeks that looked exotic in a land of pale faces.  She wore a mass of black crisp ringlets aggressively suggestive of singeing and curl-papers.  She was the belle of Royal Street in her spare time, and womanly triumphs dogged even her working hours.  She was sixteen years old, and devoted her youth and beauty to buttonholes.  In the East End, where a spade is a spade, a buttonhole is a buttonhole, and not a primrose or a pansy.  There are two kinds of buttonhole—­the coarse for slop goods and the fine for gentlemanly wear.  Becky concentrated herself on superior buttonholes, which are worked with fine twist.  She stitched them in her father’s workshop, which was more comfortable than a stranger’s, and better fitted for evading the Factory Acts.  To-night she was radiant in silk and jewelry, and her pert snub nose had the insolence of felicity which Agamemnon deprecated.  Seeing her, you would have as soon connected her with Esoteric Buddhism as with buttonholes.