“Not enough!” the old man would exclaim in surprise.  “Here you are, then!” And he would give the peas another sprinkling from the pepper-pot.

Moses Ansell’s progeny were not in the picture.  The younger children were at home, the elder had gone to school an hour before to run about and get warm in the spacious playgrounds.  A slice of bread each and the wish-wash of a thrice-brewed pennyworth of tea had been their morning meal, and there was no prospect of dinner.  The thought of them made Moses’s heart heavy again; he forgot the Maggid’s explanation of the verse in Habakkuk, and he retraced his steps towards Mordecai Schwartz’s shop.  But like his humbler rival, Mordecai had no use for the many-sided Moses; he was “full up” with swarthy “hands,” though, as there were rumors of strikes in the air, he prudently took note of Moses’s address.  After this rebuff, Moses shuffled hopelessly about for more than an hour; the dinner-hour was getting desperately near; already children passed him, carrying the Sunday dinners from the bakeries, and there were wafts of vague poetry in the atmosphere.  Moses felt he could not face his own children.

At last he nerved himself to an audacious resolution, and elbowed his way blusterously towards the Ruins, lest he might break down if his courage had time to cool.

“The Ruins” was a great stony square, partly bordered by houses, and only picturesque on Sundays when it became a branch of the all-ramifying Fair.  Moses could have bought anything there from elastic braces to green parrots in gilt cages.  That is to say if he had had money.  At present he had nothing in his pocket except holes.

What he might be able to do on his way back was another matter; for it was Malka that Moses Ansell was going to see.  She was the cousin of his deceased wife, and lived in Zachariah Square.  Moses had not been there for a month, for Malka was a wealthy twig of the family tree, to be approached with awe and trembling.  She kept a second-hand clothes store in Houndsditch, a supplementary stall in the Halfpenny Exchange, and a barrow on the “Ruins” of a Sunday; and she had set up Ephraim, her newly-acquired son-in-law, in the same line of business in the same district.  Like most things she dealt in, her son-in-law was second-hand, having lost his first wife four years ago in Poland.  But he was only twenty-two, and a second-hand son-in-law of twenty-two is superior to many brand new ones.  The two domestic establishments were a few minutes away from the shops, facing each other diagonally across the square.  They were small, three-roomed houses, without basements, the ground floor window in each being filled up with a black gauze blind (an invariable index of gentility) which allowed the occupants to see all that was passing outside, but confronted gazers with their own rejections.  Passers-by postured at these mirrors, twisting moustaches perkily, or giving coquettish pats to bonnets, unwitting of the