Benjamin, of the Ruins, purified her knives and forks for Passover by sticking them between the boards of the floor.  Would you believe she didn’t make them red hot first?  I gave her a bit of my mind.  She said she forgot.  But not she!  She’s no cat’s head.  She’s a regular Christian, that’s what she is.  I shouldn’t wonder if she becomes one like that blackguard, David Brandon; I always told my Milly he was not the sort of person to allow across the threshold.  It was Sam Levine who brought him.  You see what comes of having the son of a proselyte in the family!  Some say Reb Shemuel’s daughter narrowly escaped being engaged to him.  But that story has a beard already.  I suppose it’s the sight of you brings up Olov Hashotom times.  Well, and how are you?” she concluded abruptly, becoming suddenly conscious of imperfect courtesy.

“Oh, I’m very well, thank you,” said Esther.

“Ah, that’s right.  You’re looking very well, imbeshreer.  Quite a grand lady.  I always knew you’d be one some day.  There was your poor mother, peace be upon him!  She went and married your father, though I warned her he was a Schnorrer and only wanted her because she had a rich family; he’d have sent you out with matches if I hadn’t stopped it.  I remember saying to him, ’That little Esther has Aristotle’s head—­let her learn all she can, as sure as I stand here she will grow up to be a lady; I shall have no need to be ashamed of owning her for a cousin.’  He was not so pig-headed as your mother, and you see the result.”

She surveyed the result with an affectionate smile, feeling genuinely proud of her share in its production.  “If my Ezekiel were only a few years older,” she added musingly.

“Oh, but I am not a great lady,” said Esther, hastening to disclaim false pretensions to the hand of the hero of the hoop, “I’ve left the Goldsmiths and come back to live in the East End.”

“What!” said Malka.  “Left the West End!” Her swarthy face grew darker; the skin about her black eyebrows was wrinkled with wrath.

“Are you Meshuggah?” she asked after an awful silence.  “Or have you, perhaps, saved up a tidy sum of money?”

Esther flushed and shook her head.

“There’s no use coming to me.  I’m not a rich woman, far from it; and I have been blessed with Kinder who are helpless without me.  It’s as I always said to your father.  ‘Meshe,’ I said, ’you’re a Schnorrer and your children’ll grow up Schnorrers.’”

Esther turned white, but the dwindling of Malka’s semi-divinity had diminished the old woman’s power of annoying her.

“I want to earn my own living,” she said, with a smile that was almost contemptuous.  “Do you call that being a Schnorrer?”

“Don’t argue with me.  You’re just like your poor mother, peace be upon him!” cried the irate old woman.  “You God’s fool!  You were provided for in life and you have no right to come upon the family.”