Little Sarah’s lamentations never ceased till she had been avenged by a higher hand.  There were several great powers but Esther was the most trusty instrument of reprisal.  If Esther was out little Sarah’s sobs ceased speedily, for she, too, felt the folly of fruitless tears.  Though she nursed in her breast the sense of injury, she would even resume her amicable romps with Isaac.  But the moment the step of the avenger was heard on the stairs, little Sarah would betake herself to the corner and howl with the pain of Isaac’s pummellings.  She had a strong love of abstract justice and felt that if the wrongdoer were to go unpunished, there was no security for the constitution of things.

To-day’s holiday did not pass without an outbreak of this sort.  It occurred about tea-time.  Perhaps the infants were fractious because there was no tea.  Esther had to economize her resources and a repast at seven would serve for both tea and supper.  Among the poor, combination meals are as common as combination beds and chests.  Esther had quieted Sarah by slapping Isaac, but as this made Isaac howl the gain was dubious.  She had to put a fresh piece of coal on the fire and sing to them while their shadows contorted themselves grotesquely on the beds and then upwards along the sloping walls, terminating with twisted necks on the ceiling.

Esther usually sang melancholy things in minor keys.  They seemed most attuned to the dim straggling room.  There was a song her mother used to sing.  It was taken from a Purim-Spiel, itself based upon a Midrash, one of the endless legends with which the People of One Book have broidered it, amplifying every minute detail with all the exuberance of oriental imagination and justifying their fancies with all the ingenuity of a race of lawyers.  After his brethren sold Joseph to the Midianite merchants, the lad escaped from the caravan and wandered foot-sore and hungry to Bethlehem, to the grave of his mother, Rachel.  And he threw himself upon the ground and wept aloud and sang to a heart-breaking melody in Yiddish.

    Und hei weh ist mir,
    Wie schlecht ist doch mir,
    Ich bin vertrieben geworen
    Junger held voon dir.

Whereof the English runs: 

    Alas! woe is me! 
    How wretched to be
    Driven away and banished,
    Yet so young, from thee.

Thereupon the voice of his beloved mother Rachel was heard from the grave, comforting him and bidding him be of good cheer, for that his future should be great and glorious.

Esther could not sing this without the tears trickling down her cheeks.  Was it that she thought of her own dead mother and applied the lines to herself?  Isaac’s ill-humor scarcely ever survived the anodyne of these mournful cadences.  There was another melodious wail which Alte Belcovitch had brought from Poland.  The chorus ran: 

    Man nemt awek die chasanim voon die callohs
    Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree!