Moses’s face fell.  When his wife was alive, she had been a link of connection between “The Family” and himself, her cousin having generously employed her as a char-woman.  So Moses knew the import of the clothes-brush.  Malka was very particular about her appearance and loved to be externally speckless, but somehow or other she had no clothes-brush at home.  This deficiency did not matter ordinarily, for she practically lived at Milly’s.  But when she had words with Milly or her husband, she retired to her own house to sulk or schmull, as they called it.  The carrying away of the clothes-brush was, thus, a sign that she considered the breach serious and hostilities likely to be protracted.  Sometimes a whole week would go by without the two houses ceasing to stare sullenly across at each other, the situation in Milly’s camp being aggravated by the lack of a clothes-brush.  In such moments of irritation, Milly’s husband was apt to declare that his mother-in-law had abundance of clothes-brushes, for, he pertinently asked, how did she manage during her frequent business tours in the country?  He gave it as his conviction that Malka merely took the clothes-brush away to afford herself a handle for returning.  But then Ephraim Phillips was a graceless young fellow, the death of whose first wife was probably a judgment on his levity, and everybody except his second mother-in-law knew that he had a book of tickets for the Oxbridge Music Hall, and went there on Friday nights.  Still, in spite of these facts, experience did show that whenever Milly’s camp had outsulked Malka’s, the old woman’s surrender was always veiled under the formula of:  “Oh Milly, I’ve brought you over your clothes-brush.  I just noticed it, and thought you might be wanting it.”  After this, conversation was comparatively easy.

Moses hardly cared to face Malka in such a crisis of the clothes-brush.  He turned away despairingly, and was going back through the small archway which led to the Ruins and the outside world, when a grating voice startled his ear.

“Well, Meshe, whither fliest thou?  Has my Milly forbidden thee to see me?”

He looked back.  Malka was standing at her house-door.  He retraced his steps.

“N-n-o,” he murmured.  “I thought you still out with your stall.”

That was where she should have been, at any rate, till half an hour ago.  She did not care to tell herself, much less Moses, that she had been waiting at home for the envoy of peace from the filial camp summoning her to the ceremony of the Redemption of her grandson.

“Well, now thou seest me,” she said, speaking Yiddish for his behoof, “thou lookest not outwardly anxious to know how it goes with me.”

“How goes it with you?”