stein. 'And not give the fish time to get
cold! It's that red mark again--sooner than lose it you'd see your own
sister eat hot fish. Be off at once to her, you unnatural brat, or
I'll bang the frying-pan about your head. That'll give you a red
mark--yes, and a black mark, too! My poor Becky never persecuted me
with Banners, and she's twice the scholard you are.'

'Why, she can't spell "neuralgia,"' said Bloomah resentfully.

'And who wants to spell a thing like that? It's bad enough to feel it.
Wait till you have babies and neuralgy of your own, and you'll see how
you'll spell.'

'She can't spell "racked" either,' put in Daniel.

His mother turned on him witheringly. 'She didn't go to school with
the _Meshummodim_.'

Bloomah suddenly picked up her satchel.

'What's your books for? You don't fry fish with books.' Mrs.
Beckenstein wrested it away from her, and dashed it on the floor. The
pencil-case rolled one way, the thimble another.

'But I can get to school for the afternoon attendance.'

'Madness! With your sister in agony? Have you no feelings? Don't let
me see your brazen face before the Sabbath!'

Bloomah crept out broken-hearted. On the way to Becky's her feet
turned of themselves by long habit down the miry street in which the
red-brick school-building rose in dreary importance. The sight of the
great iron gate and the hurrying children caused her a throb of guilt.
For a moment she stood wrestling with the temptation to enter.

It was but for the moment. She might rise to the heresy of _hot_ fried
fish in lieu of cold, but Becky's Sabbath altogether devoid of fried
fish was a thought too sacrilegious for her childish brain.

From her earliest babyhood chunks of cold fried fish had been part of
her conception of the Day of Rest. Visions and odours of her mother
frying plaice and soles--at worst, cod or mackerel--were inwoven with
her most sacred memories of the coming Sabbath; it is probable she
thought Friday was short for frying-day.

With a sob she turned back, hurrying as if to escape the tug of
temptation.

'Bloomah! Where are you off to?'

It was the alarmed cry of a classmate. Bloomah took to her heels, her
face a fiery mass of shame and grief.

Towards midday Becky's fish, nicely browned and sprigged with parsley,
stood cooling on the great blue willow-pattern dish, and Becky's
neuralgia abated, perhaps from the mental relief of the spectacle.

When the clock struck twelve, Bloomah wa