es, it stands in the letter that I
am to come--they do not ask thee. Who knows that the great people will
not be angry if I bring thee with me? I dare say Benjamin will soon be
better. He cannot have been ill long."

"But, quick, then, father, quick!" cried Esther, yielding to the complex
difficulties of the position. "Go at once."

"Immediately, Esther. Wait only till I have finished my prayers. I am
nearly done."

"No! No!" cried Esther agonized. "Thou prayest so much--God will let
thee off a little bit just for once. Thou must go at once and ride both
ways, else how shall we know what has happened? I will pawn my new prize
and that will give thee money enough."

"Good!" said Moses. "While thou art pledging the book I shall have time
to finish _davening_." He hitched up his _Talith_ and commenced to
gabble off, "Happy are they who dwell in Thy house; ever shall they
praise Thee, Selah," and was already saying, "And a Redeemer shall come
unto Zion," by the time Esther rushed out through the door with the
pledge. It was a gaudily bound volume called "Treasures of Science," and
Esther knew it almost by heart, having read it twice from gilt cover to
gilt cover. All the same, she would miss it sorely. The pawnbroker lived
only round the corner, for like the publican he springs up wherever the
conditions are favorable. He was a Christian; by a curious anomaly the
Ghetto does not supply its own pawnbrokers, but sends them out to the
provinces or the West End. Perhaps the business instinct dreads the
solicitation of the racial.

Esther's pawnbroker was a rubicund portly man. He knew the fortunes of a
hundred families by the things left with him or taken back. It was on
his stuffy shelves that poor Benjamin's coat had lain compressed and
packed away when it might have had a beautiful airing in the grounds of
the Crystal Palace. It was from his stuffy shelves that Esther's mother
had redeemed it--a day after the fair--soon to be herself compressed and
packed away in a pauper's coffin, awaiting in silence whatsoever
Redemption might be. The best coat itself had long since been sold to a
ragman, for Solomon, upon whose back it devolved, when Benjamin was so
happily translated, could never be got to keep a best coat longer than a
year, and when a best coat is degraded to every-day wear its attrition
is much more than six times as rapid.

"Good mornen, my little dear," said the rubicund man. "You're early this
mornen." The a