fact that they were
studied out of minutely-printed folios by men of extreme sanctity.

"He knows a little _Gemorah_, too," said Moses. "I can't teach him at
home because I haven't got a _Gemorah_,--it's so expensive, as you know.
But he went with me to the _Beth-Medrash_, when the _Maggid_ was
studying it with a class free of charge, and we learnt the whole of the
_Tractate Niddah_. Solomon understands very well all about the Divorce
Laws, and he could adjudicate on the duties of women to their husbands."

"Ah, but he'll never know _Cabbulah_," said Malka, driven to her last
citadel. "But then no one in England can study _Cabbulah_ since the days
of Rabbi Falk (the memory of the righteous for a blessing) any more than
a born Englishman can learn Talmud. There's something in the air that
prevents it. In my town there was a Rabbi who could do _Cabbulah_; he
could call Abraham our father from the grave. But in this pig-eating
country no one can be holy enough for the Name, blessed be It, to grant
him the privilege. I don't believe the _Shochetim_ kill the animals
properly; the statutes are violated; even pious people eat _tripha_
cheese and butter. I don't say thou dost, Meshe, but thou lettest thy
children."

"Well, your own butter is not _kosher_," said Moses, nettled.

"My butter? What does it matter about my butter? I never set up for a
purist. I don't come of a family of Rabbonim. I'm only a business woman.
It's the _froom_ people that I complain of; the people who ought to set
an example, and are lowering the standard of _Froomkeit_. I caught a
beadle's wife the other day washing her meat and butter plates in the
same bowl of water. In time they will be frying steaks in butter, and
they will end by eating _tripha_ meat out of butter plates, and the
judgment of God will come. But what is become of thine apple? Thou hast
not gorged it already?" Moses nervously pointed to his trousers pocket,
bulged out by the mutilated globe. After his first ravenous bite Moses
had bethought himself of his responsibilities.

"It's for the _kinder_," he explained.

"_Nu_, the _kinder_!" snorted Malka disdainfully. "And what will they
give thee for it? Verily, not a thank you. In my young days we trembled
before the father and the mother, and my mother, peace be upon him,
_potched_ my face after I was a married woman. I shall never forget that
slap--it nearly made me adhere to the wall. But now-a-days our children
sit on our head