“The hands are the hands of Hannah,” he said, “but the voice is the voice of Simcha.”

Hannah laughed merrily.

“All right, dear, I won’t scold you any more.  I’m so glad it didn’t really enter your great stupid, clever old head that I was likely to care for Pinchas.”

“My dear daughter, Pinchas wished to take you to wife, and I felt pleased.  It is a union with a son of the Torah, who has also the pen of a ready writer.  He asked me to tell you and I did.”

“But you would not like me to marry any one I did not like.”

“God forbid!  My little Hannah shall marry whomever she pleases.”

A wave of emotion passed over the girl’s face.

“You don’t mean that, father,” she said, shaking her head.

“True as the Torah!  Why should I not?”

“Suppose,” she said slowly, “I wanted to marry a Christian?”

Her heart beat painfully as she put the question.

Reb Shemuel laughed heartily.

“My Hannah would have made a good Talmudist.  Of course, I don’t mean it in that sense.”

“Yes, but if I was to marry a very link Jew, you’d think it almost as bad.”

“No, no!” said the Reb, shaking his head.  “That’s a different thing altogether; a Jew is a Jew, and a Christian a Christian.”

“But you can’t always distinguish between them,” argued Hannah.  “There are Jews who behave as if they were Christians, except, of course, they don’t believe in the Crucified One.”

Still the old Reb shook his head.

“The worst of Jews cannot put off his Judaism.  His unborn soul undertook the yoke of the Torah at Sinai.”

“Then you really wouldn’t mind if I married a link Jew!”

He looked at her, startled, a suspicion dawning in his eyes.

“I should mind,” he said slowly.  “But if you loved him he would become a good Jew.”

The simple conviction of his words moved her to tears, but she kept them back.

“But if he wouldn’t?”

“I should pray.  While there is life there is hope for the sinner in Israel.”

She fell back on her old question.

“And you would really not mind whom I married?”

“Follow your heart, my little one,” said Reb Shemuel.  “It is a good heart and it will not lead you wrong.”

Hannah turned away to hide the tears that could no longer be stayed.  Her father resumed his reading of the Law.

But he had got through very few verses ere he felt a soft warm arm round his neck and a wet cheek laid close to his.

“Father, forgive me,” whispered the lips.  “I am so sorry.  I thought, that—­that I—­that you—­oh father, father!  I feel as if I had never known you before to-night.”

“What is it, my daughter?” said Reb Shemuel, stumbling into Yiddish in his anxiety.  “What hast thou done?”

“I have betrothed myself,” she answered, unwittingly adopting his dialect.  “I have betrothed myself without telling thee or mother.”