t of the
clothes-brush. Malka was very particular about her appearance and loved
to be externally speckless, but somehow or other she had no
clothes-brush at home. This deficiency did not matter ordinarily, for
she practically lived at Milly's. But when she had words with Milly or
her husband, she retired to her own house to sulk or _schmull_, as they
called it. The carrying away of the clothes-brush was, thus, a sign that
she considered the breach serious and hostilities likely to be
protracted. Sometimes a whole week would go by without the two houses
ceasing to stare sullenly across at each other, the situation in Milly's
camp being aggravated by the lack of a clothes-brush. In such moments of
irritation, Milly's husband was apt to declare that his mother-in-law
had abundance of clothes-brushes, for, he pertinently asked, how did she
manage during her frequent business tours in the country? He gave it as
his conviction that Malka merely took the clothes-brush away to afford
herself a handle for returning. But then Ephraim Phillips was a
graceless young fellow, the death of whose first wife was probably a
judgment on his levity, and everybody except his second mother-in-law
knew that he had a book of tickets for the Oxbridge Music Hall, and went
there on Friday nights. Still, in spite of these facts, experience did
show that whenever Milly's camp had outsulked Malka's, the old woman's
surrender was always veiled under the formula of: "Oh Milly, I've
brought you over your clothes-brush. I just noticed it, and thought you
might be wanting it." After this, conversation was comparatively easy.

Moses hardly cared to face Malka in such a crisis of the clothes-brush.
He turned away despairingly, and was going back through the small
archway which led to the Ruins and the outside world, when a grating
voice startled his ear.

"Well, Meshe, whither fliest thou? Has my Milly forbidden thee to see
me?"

He looked back. Malka was standing at her house-door. He retraced his
steps.

"N-n-o," he murmured. "I thought you still out with your stall."

That was where she should have been, at any rate, till half an hour ago.
She did not care to tell herself, much less Moses, that she had been
waiting at home for the envoy of peace from the filial camp summoning
her to the ceremony of the Redemption of her grandson.

"Well, now thou seest me," she said, speaking Yiddish for his behoof,
"thou lookest not outwardly anxious to know ho