of your getting _kosher_ meat, Mordecai.
For you'll have to trust to those you live with."

"That's all right, that's all right, you may be sure, mother," said
Cohen, as if anxious to cut off inquiry on matters in which he was
uncertain of the guest's position. "So, sir," he added, turning with a
look of amused enlightenment to Deronda, "it was better than learning
you had to talk to Mordecai about! I wondered to myself at the time. I
thought somehow there was a something."

"Mordecai will perhaps explain to you how it was that I was seeking
him," said Deronda, feeling that he had better go, and rising as he
spoke.

It was agreed that he should come again and the final move be made on
the next day but one; but when he was going Mordecai begged to walk
with him to the end of the street, and wrapped himself in coat and
comforter. It was a March evening, and Deronda did not mean to let him
go far, but he understood the wish to be outside the house with him in
communicative silence, after the exciting speech that had been filling
the last hour. No word was spoken until Deronda had proposed parting,
when he said--

"Mirah would wish to thank the Cohens for their goodness. You would
wish her to do so--to come and see them, would you not?"

Mordecai did not answer immediately, but at length said--

"I cannot tell. I fear not. There is a family sorrow, and the sight of
my sister might be to them as the fresh bleeding of wounds. There is a
daughter and sister who will never be restored as Mirah is. But who
knows the pathways? We are all of us denying or fulfilling prayers--and
men in their careless deeds walk amidst invisible outstretched arms and
pleadings made in vain. In my ears I have the prayers of generations
past and to come. My life is as nothing to me but the beginning of
fulfilment. And yet I am only another prayer--which you will fulfil."

Deronda pressed his hand, and they parted.

CHAPTER XLVII.

"And you must love him ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love."
--WORDSWORTH.

One might be tempted to envy Deronda providing new clothes for
Mordecai, and pleasing himself as if he were sketching a picture in
imagining the effect of the fine gray flannel shirts and a
dressing-gown very much like a Franciscan's brown frock, with
Mordecai's head and neck above them. Half his pleasure was the sense of
seeing Mirah's brother through her eyes, and securing her fervid joy
fr