board placed upon two barrels and covered with
a gay red scarf Rachel had found with the fencing foils.

"It does look nice," she admitted, viewing her efforts with her head
on one side as Matilda poured out the last glass of gooseberry wine
and set it in its place. "Only," with a little sigh, "I do wish my
birthday hadn't come today so we could have had candles instead of
those wax roses on the cake."

"Why couldn't you?" Matilda asked curiously.

"It isn't right for people to light birthday candles on _Shabbas_,"
explained Rachel. "Jewish people, I mean," she qualified as she tied a
napkin around Benjamin's fat neck and deposited him in a seat at the
table furtherest from the birthday cake. "But it's different for you
'cause you're not Jewish."

"It's queer people are all different and go to different churches,"
puzzled Matilda. "My mamma says----"

But no one ever heard her mother's opinion on the subject, for Joseph
and Jacob on seeing Rebecca take her place at the head of the table
raced to their seats with howls like hungry Indians at dinner time.
For a few minutes the children's noisy tongues were hushed as the
little hostess passed out sandwiches and jelly tarts. But when all the
plates were empty to the last crumb and only the birthday cake
remained in solitary splendor, just beyond the reach of Benjamin's
greedy fingers, Joseph remarked with a satisfied sigh:

"This was just like one of those king's dinners in the fairy books.
Like the banquet Esther gave the king at Purim."

"I wish it was Purim again," observed Jacob, who, seeing that the
pitcher was empty, began to wish that he had drunk his second glass of
gooseberry wine a little more slowly. "Don't you remember last Purim,
Becky, how you wore mother's old black silk and played you were Queen
Esther? But Joe and Hyman took all the good parts and wouldn't let me
be a king or anything."

"We don't have to wait till Purim to dress up and play king and
queen," Rebecca told him, her brows knit in her effort to divide the
pink and white cake into six slices of equal thickness. "As soon as
we've finished our cake, we'll look through those old trunks over
there. There're ever so many dresses and things from Austria and an
Indian blanket and beads and such things and I know mother wouldn't
care if we played with them as long as we put 'em all back again."

Joseph sprang up, his piece of frosted cake in his hand. "I want the
Indian stuff," he cried.