uty, and I come home for dinner
to stay. Rose, darling, you look all tired out. You shouldn't wait up
for me."

"It isn't that. It's Hannah. She cried for more than an hour to-night,
and but for Mandy and her tales I believe she would still be crying."
And she detailed the scene to him.

"But, good gracious, Rose, let Santa Claus bring her presents to her,"
said Eli, when she had finished. "Hannah's nothing but a baby."

"She is beginning to think for herself."

"As you did at a very early age," he reminded her, "and your father the
strictest of orthodox rabbis. How old were you when you began slipping
off to the reformed temple?"

"I broke my father's heart," she said somberly. "I'll be punished
through Hannah."

"Not unless you let Hannah think faster than you do. And remember," he
added teasingly, "if you hadn't run off to the reformed temple you would
never have met me."

"Outside, at the foot of the steps," she recalled. "I would never have
met you inside."

"Maybe I am lax," he acknowledged, "but it seems to me that if you are
living a decent life yourself, and giving the other fellow a square
deal, you are pretty nearly fulfilling the law and the prophets."

"And what do you suppose is happening to Hannah with a Christian Science
family on one side and Roman Catholics on the other?" she demanded
tragically. "She's decided not to take any more medicine, because
Virginia Lawrence doesn't. And she has Nellie Halloran's every
expression about the Virgin and the Saviour. Not only that, but she has
made friends with a Christian Science practitioner through the
Lawrences, and calls him 'my friend Mr. Jackson.' She runs to meet him
and walks the length of the block with him every time he passes."

"Hannah is certainly a natural born mixer," laughed the father. "We are
saving ourselves trouble by giving her the best there is to mix with!"

"Eli, I am afraid we made a mistake moving out here, away from all our
people."

"No, we didn't make a mistake," he declared earnestly. "The Square was
no place to bring up Hannah, among those parvenu Jews. We have the
prettiest home on the heights and the best people in town for
neighbors."

"Our child is losing her identity as a Jewess."

"Let her find it again as an American," he replied. "Frankly, Rose, I
don't lose any sleep over trying to keep _my_ identity as a Jew intact.
If a Jew doesn't like it here, let him go back to Palestine or to the
country that oppres