“I do say,” said Malka, unconsciously taking up the clothes-brush and thumping with it on the table to emphasize the outrage.  “I told her that when Yechezkel cried so much, it would be better to look for the pin than to dose the child for gripes.  ‘I dressed it myself, Mother,’ says she.  ‘Thou art an obstinate cat’s head.  Milly,’ says I.  ’I say there is a pin.’  ‘And I know better,’ says she.  ’How canst thou know better than I?’ says I.  ‘Why, I was a mother before thou wast born.’  So I unrolled the child’s flannel, and sure enough underneath it just over the stomach I found—­”

“The pin,” concluded Moses, shaking his head gravely.

“No, not exactly.  But a red mark where the pin had been pricking the poor little thing.”

“And what did Milly say then?” said Moses in sympathetic triumph.

“Milly said it was a flea-bite! and I said, ’Gott in Himmel, Milly, dost thou want to swear my eyes away?  My enemies shall have such a flea-bite.’  And because Red Rivkah was in the room, Milly said I was shedding her blood in public, and she began to cry as if I had committed a crime against her in looking after her child.  And I rushed out, leaving the two babies howling together.  That was a week ago.”

“And how is the child?”

“How should I know?  I am only the grandmother, I only supplied the bed-linen it was born on.”

“But is it recovered from the circumcision?”

“Oh, yes, all our family have good healing flesh.  It’s a fine, child, imbeshreer.  It’s got my eyes and nose.  It’s a rare handsome baby, imbeshreer.  Only it won’t be its mother’s fault if the Almighty takes it not back again.  Milly has picked up so many ignorant Lane women who come in and blight the child, by admiring it aloud, not even saying imbeshreer.  And then there’s an old witch, a beggar-woman that Ephraim, my son-in-law, used to give a shilling a week to.  Now he only gives her ninepence.  She asked him ‘why?’ and he said, ’I’m married now.  I can’t afford more.’  ‘What!’ she shrieked, ’you got married on my money!’ And one Friday when the nurse had baby downstairs, the old beggar-woman knocked for her weekly allowance, and she opened the door, and she saw the child, and she looked at it with her Evil Eye!  I hope to Heaven nothing will come of it.”

“I will pray for Yechezkel,” said Moses.

“Pray for Milly also, while thou art about it, that she may remember what is owing to a mother before the earth covers me.  I don’t know what’s coming over children.  Look at my Leah.  She will marry that Sam Levine, though he belongs to a lax English family, and I suspect his mother was a proselyte.  She can’t fry fish any way.  I don’t say anything against Sam, but still I do think my Leah might have told me before falling in love with him.  And yet see how I treat them!  My Michael made a Missheberach for them in synagogue the Sabbath after the engagement;