Presently Mrs. Isaacs reappeared.  She had thought of something she ought to have said.  She went up to her sister’s closed door, and shouted into the key-hole:  “None of my children ever had bandy-legs!”

Almost immediately the window of the front bedroom was flung up, and Mrs. Jacobs leant out of it waving what looked like an immense streamer.

“Aha,” she observed, dangling it tantalizingly up and down.  “Morry antique!”

The dress fluttered in the breeze.  Mrs. Jacobs caressed the stuff between her thumb and forefinger.

“Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk,” she announced with a long ecstatic quaver.

Mrs. Isaacs stood paralyzed by the brilliancy of the repartee.

Mrs. Jacobs withdrew the moire antique and exhibited a mauve gown.

“Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk.”

The mauve fluttered for a triumphant instant, the next a puce and amber dress floated on the breeze.

“Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk.”  Mrs. Jacobs’s fingers smoothed it lovingly, then it was drawn within to be instantly replaced by a green dress.  Mrs. Jacobs passed the skirt slowly through her fingers.  “Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk!” she quavered mockingly.

By this time Mrs. Isaacs’s face was the color of the latest flag of victory.

“The tallyman!” she tried to retort, but the words stuck in her throat.  Fortunately just then she caught sight of her poor lamb playing with the other poor lamb.  She dashed at her offspring, boxed its ears and crying, “You little blackguard, if I ever catch you playing with blackguards again, I’ll wring your neck for you,” she hustled the infant into the house and slammed the door viciously behind her.

Moses had welcomed this every-day scene, for it put off a few moments his encounter with the formidable Malka.  As she had not appeared at door or window, he concluded she was in a bad temper or out of London; neither alternative was pleasant.

He knocked at the door of Milly’s house where her mother was generally to be found, and an elderly char-woman opened it.  There were some bottles of spirit, standing on a wooden side-table covered with a colored cloth, and some unopened biscuit bags.  At these familiar premonitory signs of a festival, Moses felt tempted to beat a retreat.  He could not think for the moment what was up, but whatever it was he had no doubt the well-to-do persons would supply him with ice.  The char-woman, with brow darkened by soot and gloom, told him that Milly was upstairs, but that her mother had gone across to her own house with the clothes-brush.