ys slept in one bed and the grandmother and the
three girls in another. Esther had to sleep with her head on a
supplementary pillow at the foot of the bed. But there can be much love
in a little room.

The room was not, however, so very little, for it was of ungainly
sprawling structure, pushing out an odd limb that might have been cut
off with a curtain. The walls nodded fixedly to one another so that the
ceiling was only half the size of the floor. The furniture comprised but
the commonest necessities. This attic of the Ansells was nearer heaven
than most earthly dwelling places, for there were four tall flights of
stairs to mount before you got to it. No. 1 Royal Street had been in its
time one of the great mansions of the Ghetto; pillars of the synagogue
had quaffed _kosher_ wine in its spacious reception rooms and its
corridors had echoed with the gossip of portly dames in stiff brocades.
It was stoutly built and its balusters were of carved oak. But now the
threshold of the great street door, which was never closed, was
encrusted with black mud, and a musty odor permanently clung to the wide
staircase and blent subtly with far-away reminiscences of Mr.
Belcovitch's festive turpentine. The Ansells had numerous housemates,
for No. 1 Royal Street was a Jewish colony in itself and the resident
population was periodically swollen by the "hands" of the Belcovitches
and by the "Sons of the Covenant," who came to worship at their
synagogue on the ground floor. What with Sugarman the _Shadchan_, on the
first floor, Mrs. Simons and Dutch Debby on the second, the Belcovitches
on the third, and the Ansells and Gabriel Hamburg, the great scholar, on
the fourth, the door-posts twinkled with _Mezuzahs_--cases or cylinders
containing sacred script with the word _Shaddai_ (Almighty) peering out
of a little glass eye at the centre. Even Dutch Debby, abandoned wretch
as she was, had this protection against evil spirits (so it has come to
be regarded) on her lintel, though she probably never touched the eye
with her finger to kiss the place of contact after the manner of the
faithful.

Thus was No. 1 Royal Street close packed with the stuff of human life,
homespun and drab enough, but not altogether profitless, may be, to turn
over and examine. So close packed was it that there was scarce breathing
space. It was only at immemorial intervals that our pauper alien made a
pun, but one day he flashed upon the world the pregnant remark t