where cats prowled and dingy sparrows hopped, in an atmosphere laden with whiffs from a neighboring dairyman’s stables, Esther lost herself in wild tales of passion and romance.  She frequently read them aloud for the benefit of the sallow-faced needle-woman, who had found romance square so sadly with the realities of her own existence.  And so all a summer afternoon, Dutch Debby and Esther would be rapt away to a world of brave men and fair women, a world of fine linen and purple, of champagne and wickedness and cigarettes, a world where nobody worked or washed shirts or was hungry or had holes in boots, a world utterly ignorant of Judaism and the heinousness of eating meat with butter.  Not that Esther for her part correlated her conception of this world with facts.  She never realized that it was an actually possible world—­never indeed asked herself whether it existed outside print or not.  She never thought of it in that way at all, any more than it ever occurred to her that people once spoke the Hebrew she learned to read and translate.  “Bobby” was often present at these readings, but he kept his thoughts to himself, sitting on his hind legs with his delightfully ugly nose tilted up inquiringly at Esther.  For the best of all this new friendship was that Bobby was not jealous.  He was only a sorry dun-colored mongrel to outsiders, but Esther learned to see him almost through Dutch Debby’s eyes.  And she could run up the stairs freely, knowing that if she trod on his tail now, he would take it as a mark of camaraderie.

“I used to pay a penny a week for the London Journal,” said Debby early in their acquaintanceship, “till one day I discovered I had a dreadful bad memory.”

“And what was the good of that?” said Esther.

“Why, it was worth shillings and shillings to me.  You see I used to save up all the back numbers of the London Journal because of the answers to correspondents, telling you how to do your hair and trim your nails and give yourself a nice complexion.  I used to bother my head about that sort of thing in those days, dear; and one day I happened to get reading a story in a back number only about a year old and I found I was just as interested as if I had never read it before and I hadn’t the slightest remembrance of it.  After that I left off buying the Journal and took to reading my big heap of back numbers.  I get through them once every two years.”  Debby interrupted herself with a fit of coughing, for lengthy monologue is inadvisable for persons who bend over needle-work in dark back rooms.  Recovering herself, she added, “And then I start afresh.  You couldn’t do that, could you?”

“No,” admitted Esther, with a painful feeling of inferiority.  “I remember all I’ve ever read.”

“Ah, you will grow up a clever woman!” said Debby, patting her hair.

“Oh, do you think so?” said Esther, her dark eyes lighting up with pleasure.

“Oh yes, you’re always first in your class, ain’t you?”