The Ansells kept the “Three Weeks” pretty well all the year round.  On rare occasions they purchased pickled Dutch herrings or brought home pennyworths of pea soup or of baked potatoes and rice from a neighboring cook shop.  For Festival days, if Malka had subsidized them with a half-sovereign, Esther sometimes compounded Tzimmus, a dainty blend of carrots, pudding and potatoes.  She was prepared to write an essay on Tzimmus as a gastronomic ideal.  There were other pleasing Polish combinations which were baked for twopence by the local bakers. Tabechas, or stuffed entrails, and liver, lights or milt were good substitutes for meat.  A favorite soup was Borsch, which was made with beet-root, fat taking the place of the more fashionable cream.

The national dish was seldom their lot; when fried fish came it was usually from the larder of Mrs. Simons, a motherly old widow, who lived in the second floor front, and presided over the confinements of all the women and the sicknesses of all the children in the neighborhood.  Her married daughter Dinah was providentially suckling a black-eyed boy when Mrs. Ansell died, so Mrs. Simons converted her into a foster mother of little Sarah, regarding herself ever afterwards as under special responsibilities toward the infant, whom she occasionally took to live with her for a week, and for whom she saw heaven encouraging a future alliance with the black-eyed foster brother.  Life would have been gloomier still in the Ansell garret if Mrs. Simons had not been created to bless and sustain.  Even old garments somehow arrived from Mrs. Simons to eke out the corduroys and the print gowns which were the gift of the school.  There were few pleasanter events in the Ansell household than the falling ill of one of the children, for not only did this mean a supply of broth, port wine and other incredible luxuries from the Charity doctor (of which all could taste), but it brought in its train the assiduous attendance of Mrs. Simons.  To see the kindly brown face bending over it with smiling eyes of jet, to feel the soft, cool hand pressed to its forehead, was worth a fever to a motherless infant.  Mrs. Simons was a busy woman and a poor withal, and the Ansells were a reticent pack, not given to expressing either their love or their hunger to outsiders; so altogether the children did not see so much of Mrs. Simons or her bounties as they would have liked.  Nevertheless, in a grave crisis she was always to be counted upon.

“I tell thee what, Meshe,” said old Mrs. Ansell often, “that woman wants to marry thee.  A blind man could see it.”

“She cannot want it, mother,” Moses would reply with infinite respect.

“What art thou saying?  A wholly fine young man like thee,” said his mother, fondling his side ringlets, “and one so froom too, and with such worldly wisdom.  But thou must not have her, Meshe.”

“What kind of idea thou stuffest into my head!  I tell thee she would not have me if I sent to ask.”