CHAPTER XIV.

THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY.

It was a cold, bleak Sunday afternoon, and the Ansells were spending it
as usual. Little Sarah was with Mrs. Simons, Rachel had gone to Victoria
Park with a party of school-mates, the grandmother was asleep on the
bed, covered with one of her son's old coats (for there was no fire in
the grate), with her pious vade mecum in her hand; Esther had prepared
her lessons and was reading a little brown book at Dutch Debby's, not
being able to forget the _London Journal_ sufficiently; Solomon had not
prepared his and was playing "rounder" in the street, Isaac being
permitted to "feed" the strikers, in return for a prospective occupation
of his new bed; Moses Ansell was at _Shool_, listening to a _Hesped_ or
funeral oration at the German Synagogue, preached by Reb Shemuel over
one of the lights of the Ghetto, prematurely gone out--no other than the
consumptive _Maggid_, who had departed suddenly for a less fashionable
place than Bournemouth. "He has fallen," said the Reb, "not laden with
age, nor sighing for release because the grasshopper was a burden. But
He who holds the keys said: 'Thou hast done thy share of the work; it is
not thine to complete it. It was in thy heart to serve Me, from Me thou
shalt receive thy reward.'"

And all the perspiring crowd in the black-draped hall shook with grief,
and thousands of working men followed the body, weeping, to the grave,
walking all the way to the great cemetery in Bow.

A slim, black-haired, handsome lad of about twelve, dressed in a neat
black suit, with a shining white Eton collar, stumbled up the dark
stairs of No. 1 Royal Street, with an air of unfamiliarity and disgust.
At Dutch Debby's door he was delayed by a brief altercation with Bobby.
He burst open the door of the Ansell apartment without knocking, though
he took off his hat involuntarily as he entered Then he stood still with
an air of disappointment. The room seemed empty.

"What dost thou want, Esther?" murmured the grandmother rousing herself
sleepily.

The boy looked towards the bed with a start He could not make out what
the grandmother was saying. It was four years since he had heard Yiddish
spoken, and he had almost forgotten the existence of the dialect The
room, too, seemed chill and alien.--so unspeakably poverty-stricken.

"Oh, how are you, grandmother?" he said, going up to her and kissing her
perfunctorily. "Where's everybody?"

"Art thou Benjamin