“Well, your own butter is not kosher,” said Moses, nettled.

“My butter?  What does it matter about my butter?  I never set up for a purist.  I don’t come of a family of Rabbonim.  I’m only a business woman.  It’s the froom people that I complain of; the people who ought to set an example, and are lowering the standard of Froomkeit.  I caught a beadle’s wife the other day washing her meat and butter plates in the same bowl of water.  In time they will be frying steaks in butter, and they will end by eating tripha meat out of butter plates, and the judgment of God will come.  But what is become of thine apple?  Thou hast not gorged it already?” Moses nervously pointed to his trousers pocket, bulged out by the mutilated globe.  After his first ravenous bite Moses had bethought himself of his responsibilities.

“It’s for the kinder,” he explained.

“Nu, the kinder!” snorted Malka disdainfully.  “And what will they give thee for it?  Verily, not a thank you.  In my young days we trembled before the father and the mother, and my mother, peace be upon him, potched my face after I was a married woman.  I shall never forget that slap—­it nearly made me adhere to the wall.  But now-a-days our children sit on our heads.  I gave my Milly all she has in the world—­a house, a shop, a husband, and my best bed-linen.  And now when I want her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call it Yechezkel.”  Malka’s voice became more strident than ever.  She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the arrangement was a source of real vexation.

Moses could think of nothing better to say than to inquire how her present husband was.

“He overworks himself,” Malka replied, shaking her head.  “The misfortune is that he thinks himself a good man of business, and he is always starting new enterprises without consulting me.  If he would only take my advice more!”

Moses shook his head in sympathetic deprecation of Michael Birnbaum’s wilfulness.

“Is he at home?” he asked.

“No, but I expect him back from the country every minute.  I believe they have invited him for the Pidyun Haben to-day.”

“Oh, is that to-day?”

“Of course.  Didst thou not know?”

“No, no one told me.”

“Thine own sense should have told thee.  Is it not the thirty-first day since the birth?  But of course he won’t accept when he knows that my own daughter has driven me out of her house.”

“You say not!” exclaimed Moses in horror.