London Journal sufficiently; Solomon had not prepared his and was playing “rounder” in the street, Isaac being permitted to “feed” the strikers, in return for a prospective occupation of his new bed; Moses Ansell was at Shool, listening to a Hesped or funeral oration at the German Synagogue, preached by Reb Shemuel over one of the lights of the Ghetto, prematurely gone out—­no other than the consumptive Maggid, who had departed suddenly for a less fashionable place than Bournemouth.  “He has fallen,” said the Reb, “not laden with age, nor sighing for release because the grasshopper was a burden.  But He who holds the keys said:  ’Thou hast done thy share of the work; it is not thine to complete it.  It was in thy heart to serve Me, from Me thou shalt receive thy reward.’”

And all the perspiring crowd in the black-draped hall shook with grief, and thousands of working men followed the body, weeping, to the grave, walking all the way to the great cemetery in Bow.

A slim, black-haired, handsome lad of about twelve, dressed in a neat black suit, with a shining white Eton collar, stumbled up the dark stairs of No. 1 Royal Street, with an air of unfamiliarity and disgust.  At Dutch Debby’s door he was delayed by a brief altercation with Bobby.  He burst open the door of the Ansell apartment without knocking, though he took off his hat involuntarily as he entered Then he stood still with an air of disappointment.  The room seemed empty.

“What dost thou want, Esther?” murmured the grandmother rousing herself sleepily.

The boy looked towards the bed with a start He could not make out what the grandmother was saying.  It was four years since he had heard Yiddish spoken, and he had almost forgotten the existence of the dialect The room, too, seemed chill and alien.—­so unspeakably poverty-stricken.

“Oh, how are you, grandmother?” he said, going up to her and kissing her perfunctorily.  “Where’s everybody?”

“Art thou Benjamin?” said the grandmother, her stern, wrinkled face shadowed with surprise and doubt.

Benjamin guessed what she was asking and nodded.

“But how richly they have dressed thee!  Alas, I suppose they have taken away thy Judaism instead.  For four whole years—­is it not—­thou hast been with English folk.  Woe!  Woe!  If thy father had married a pious woman, she would have been living still and thou wouldst have been able to live happily in our midst instead of being exiled among strangers, who feed thy body and starve thy soul.  If thy father had left me in Poland, I should have died happy and my old eyes would never have seen the sorrow.  Unbutton thy waistcoat, let me see if thou wearest the ‘four-corners’ at least.”  Of this harangue, poured forth at the rate natural to thoughts running ever in the same groove, Benjamin understood but a word here and there.  For four years he had read and read and read English books, absorbed himself in English composition, heard nothing but English spoken about him.  Nay, he had even deliberately put the jargon out of his mind at the commencement as something degrading and humiliating.  Now it struck vague notes of old outgrown associations but called up no definite images.