had been less anxiously
preoccupied with the more important task immediately before him, which
he desired to acquit himself of without wounding the Cohens. Mordecai,
by a memorable answer, had made it evident that he would be keenly
alive to any inadvertance in relation to their feelings. In the
interval, he had been meeting Mordecai at the _Hand and Banner_, but
now after due reflection he wrote to him saying that he had particular
reasons for wishing to see him in his own home the next evening, and
would beg to sit with him in his workroom for an hour, if the Cohens
would not regard it as an intrusion. He would call with the
understanding that if there were any objection, Mordecai would
accompany him elsewhere. Deronda hoped in this way to create a little
expectation that would have a preparatory effect.

He was received with the usual friendliness, some additional costume in
the women and children, and in all the elders a slight air of wondering
which even in Cohen was not allowed to pass the bounds of silence--the
guest's transactions with Mordecai being a sort of mystery which he was
rather proud to think lay outside the sphere of light which enclosed
his own understanding. But when Deronda said, "I suppose Mordecai is at
home and expecting me," Jacob, who had profited by the family remarks,
went up to his knee and said, "What do you want to talk to Mordecai
about?"

"Something that is very interesting to him," said Deronda, pinching the
lad's ear, "but that you can't understand."

"Can you say this?" said Jacob, immediately giving forth a string of
his rote-learned Hebrew verses with a wonderful mixture of the throaty
and the nasal, and nodding his small head at his hearer, with a sense
of giving formidable evidence which might rather alter their mutual
position.

"No, really," said Deronda, keeping grave; "I can't say anything like
it."

"I thought not," said Jacob, performing a dance of triumph with his
small scarlet legs, while he took various objects out of the deep
pockets of his knickerbockers and returned them thither, as a slight
hint of his resources; after which, running to the door of the
workroom, he opened it wide, set his back against it, and said,
"Mordecai, here's the young swell"--a copying of his father's phrase,
which seemed to him well fitted to cap the recitation of Hebrew.

He was called back with hushes by mother and grandmother, and Deronda,
entering and closing the door behind him