oped as distinct individualities as was
possible in the time at their disposal. Isaac was just five and
Sarah--who had never known her mother--just four. The thoughts of both
ran strongly in the direction of sensuous enjoyment, and they preferred
baked potatoes, especially potatoes touched with gravy, to all the joys
of the kindergarten. Isaac's ambition ran in the direction of eider-down
beds such as he had once felt at Malka's and Moses soothed him by the
horizon-like prospect of such a new bed. Places of honor had already
been conceded by the generous little chap to his father and brother.
Heaven alone knows how he had come to conceive their common bed as his
own peculiar property in which the other three resided at night on
sufferance. He could not even plead it was his by right of birth in it.
But Isaac was not after all wholly given over to worldly thoughts, for
an intellectual problem often occupied his thoughts and led him to slap
little Sarah's arms. He had been born on the 4th of December while Sarah
had been born a year later on the 3d.

"It ain't, it can't be," he would say. "Your birfday can't be afore
mine."

"'Tis, Esty thays so," Sarah would reply.

"Esty's a liar," Isaac responded imperturbably.

"Ask _Tatah_."

"_Tatah_ dunno. Ain't I five?"

"Yeth."

"And ain't you four?"

"Yeth."

"And ain't I older than you?"

"Courth."

"And wasn't I born afore you?"

"Yeth, Ikey."

"Then 'ow can your birfday come afore mine?"

"'Cos it doth."

"Stoopid!"

"It doth, arx Esty," Sarah would insist.

"Than't teep in my new bed," Ikey would threaten.

"Thall if I like."

"Than't!"

Here Sarah would generally break down in tears and Isaac with premature
economic instinct, feeling it wicked to waste a cry, would proceed to
justify it by hitting her. Thereupon little Sarah would hit him back and
develop a terrible howl.

"Hi, woe is unto me," she would wail in jargon, throwing herself on the
ground in a corner and rocking herself to and fro like her far-away
ancestresses remembering Zion by the waters of Babylon.

Little Sarah's lamentations never ceased till she had been avenged by a
higher hand. There were several great powers but Esther was the most
trusty instrument of reprisal. If Esther was out little Sarah's sobs
ceased speedily, for she, too, felt the folly of fruitless tears. Though
she nursed in her breast the sense of injury, she would even resume her
amicable romps with Isaac.