“I am so glad, father, thou didst not bring that man home.”

“What man?” said Reb Shemuel.

“The dirty monkey-faced little man who talks so much.”

The Reb considered.

“I know none such.”

“Pinchas she means,” said her mother.  “The poet!”

Reb Shemuel looked at her gravely.  This did not sound promising.

“Why dost thou speak so harshly of thy fellow-creatures?” he said.  “The man is a scholar and a poet, such as we have too few in Israel.”

“We have too many Schnorrers in Israel already,” retorted Hannah.

“Sh!” whispered Reb Shemuel reddening and indicating his guest with a slight movement of the eye.

Hannah bit her lip in self-humiliation and hastened to load the lucky Pole’s plate with an extra piece of fish.

“He has written me a letter,” she went on.

“He has told me so,” he answered.  “He loves thee with a great love.”

“What nonsense, Shemuel!” broke in Simcha, setting down her coffee-cup with work-a-day violence.  “The idea of a man who has not a penny to bless himself with marrying our Hannah!  They would be on the Board of Guardians in a month.”

“Money is not everything.  Wisdom and learning outweigh much.  And as the Midrash says:  ’As a scarlet ribbon becometh a black horse, so poverty becometh the daughter of Jacob.’  The world stands on the Torah, not on gold; as it is written:  ’Better is the Law of Thy mouth to me than thousands of gold or silver.’  He is greater than I, for he studies the law for nothing like the fathers of the Mishna while I am paid a salary.”

“Methinks thou art little inferior,” said Simcha, “for thou retainest little enough thereof.  Let Pinchas get nothing for himself, ’tis his affair, but, if he wants my Hannah, he must get something for her.  Were the fathers of the Mishna also fathers of families?”

“Certainly; is it not a command—­’Be fruitful and multiply’?”

“And how did their families live?”

“Many of our sages were artisans.”

“Aha!” snorted Simcha triumphantly.

“And says not the Talmud,” put in the Pole as if he were on the family council, “’Flay a carcass in the streets rather than be under an obligation’?” This with supreme unconsciousness of any personal application.  “Yea, and said not Rabban Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince, ’it is commendable to join the study of the Law with worldly employment’?  Did not Moses our teacher keep sheep?

“Truth,” replied the host.  “I agree with Maimonides that man should first secure a living, then prepare a residence and after that seek a wife; and that they are fools who invert the order.  But Pinchas works also with his pen.  He writes articles in the papers.  But the great thing, Hannah, is that he loves the Law.”

“H’m!” said Hannah.  “Let him marry the Law, then.”

“He is in a hurry,” said Reb Shemuel with a flash of irreverent facetiousness.  “And he cannot become the Bridegroom of the Law till Simchath Torah.”