“But it is not eighteenpence!” ejaculated Esther with a new inspiration.  Necessity was sharpening her wits to extraordinary acuteness.  “We need not take return tickets.  We can walk back.”

“But we cannot be so long away from the mother—­both of us,” said Moses.  “She, too, is ill.  And how will the children do without thee?  I will go by myself.”

“No, I must see Benjy!” Esther cried.

“Be not so stiff-necked, Esther!  Besides, it stands in the letter that I am to come—­they do not ask thee.  Who knows that the great people will not be angry if I bring thee with me?  I dare say Benjamin will soon be better.  He cannot have been ill long.”

“But, quick, then, father, quick!” cried Esther, yielding to the complex difficulties of the position.  “Go at once.”

“Immediately, Esther.  Wait only till I have finished my prayers.  I am nearly done.”

“No!  No!” cried Esther agonized.  “Thou prayest so much—­God will let thee off a little bit just for once.  Thou must go at once and ride both ways, else how shall we know what has happened?  I will pawn my new prize and that will give thee money enough.”

“Good!” said Moses.  “While thou art pledging the book I shall have time to finish davening.”  He hitched up his Talith and commenced to gabble off, “Happy are they who dwell in Thy house; ever shall they praise Thee, Selah,” and was already saying, “And a Redeemer shall come unto Zion,” by the time Esther rushed out through the door with the pledge.  It was a gaudily bound volume called “Treasures of Science,” and Esther knew it almost by heart, having read it twice from gilt cover to gilt cover.  All the same, she would miss it sorely.  The pawnbroker lived only round the corner, for like the publican he springs up wherever the conditions are favorable.  He was a Christian; by a curious anomaly the Ghetto does not supply its own pawnbrokers, but sends them out to the provinces or the West End.  Perhaps the business instinct dreads the solicitation of the racial.

Esther’s pawnbroker was a rubicund portly man.  He knew the fortunes of a hundred families by the things left with him or taken back.  It was on his stuffy shelves that poor Benjamin’s coat had lain compressed and packed away when it might have had a beautiful airing in the grounds of the Crystal Palace.  It was from his stuffy shelves that Esther’s mother had redeemed it—­a day after the fair—­soon to be herself compressed and packed away in a pauper’s coffin, awaiting in silence whatsoever Redemption might be.  The best coat itself had long since been sold to a ragman, for Solomon, upon whose back it devolved, when Benjamin was so happily translated, could never be got to keep a best coat longer than a year, and when a best coat is degraded to every-day wear its attrition is much more than six times as rapid.

“Good mornen, my little dear,” said the rubicund man.  “You’re early this mornen.”  The apprentice had, indeed, only just taken down the shutters.  “What can I do for you to-day?  You look pale, my dear; what’s the matter?”