“It’s worth having, I can tell you, so speak more respectfully,” said Hannah, more than half in earnest.

“You are the best blessing he can give me—­and that’s worth—­well, I wouldn’t venture to price it.”

“It’s not your line, eh?”

“I don’t know, I have done a good deal in gems; but where is the Rabbi?”

“Up in the bedrooms, gathering the Chomutz.  You know he won’t trust anybody else.  He creeps under all the beds, hunting with a candle for stray crumbs, and looks in all the wardrobes and the pockets of all my dresses.  Luckily, I don’t keep your letters there.  I hope he won’t set something alight—­he did once.  And one year—­Oh, it was so funny!—­after he had ransacked every hole and corner of the house, imagine his horror, in the middle of Passover to find a crumb of bread audaciously planted—­where do you suppose?  In his Passover prayer-book!!  But, oh!”—­with a little scream—­“you naughty boy!  I quite forgot.”  She took him by the shoulders, and peered along his coat.  “Have you brought any crumbs with you?  This room’s pesachdik already.”

He looked dubious.

She pushed him towards the door.  “Go out and give yourself a good shaking on the door-step, or else we shall have to clean out the room all over again.”

“Don’t!” he protested.  “I might shake out that.”

“What?”

“The ring.”

She uttered a little pleased sigh.

“Oh, have you brought that?”

“Yes, I got it while I was away.  You know I believe the reason you sent me trooping to the continent in such haste, was you wanted to ensure your engagement ring being ‘made in Germany.’  It’s had a stormy passage to England, has that ring, I suppose the advantage of buying rings in Germany is that you’re certain not to get Paris diamonds in them, they are so intensely patriotic, the Germans.  That was your idea, wasn’t it, Hannah?”

“Oh, show it me!  Don’t talk so much,” she said, smiling.

“No,” he said, teasingly.  “No more accidents for me!  I’ll wait to make sure—­till your father and mother have taken me to their arms.  Rabbinical law is so full of pitfalls—­I might touch your finger this or that way, and then we should be married.  And then, if your parents said ‘no,’ after all—­”

“We should have to make the best of a bad job,” she finished up laughingly.

“All very well,” he went on in his fun, “but it would be a pretty kettle of fish.”

“Heavens!” she cried, “so it will be.  They will be charred to ashes.”  And turning tail, she fled to the kitchen, pursued by her lover.  There, dead to the surprise of the servant, David Brandon fed his eyes on the fair incarnation of Jewish domesticity, type of the vestal virgins of Israel, Ministresses at the hearth.  It was a very homely kitchen; the dressers glistening with speckless utensils, and the deep red glow of the coal over which the pieces of fish sputtered and