not
born of religious fervor at all, I am afraid.

The sheer drama of the thing got her. In fact, the thing she had set
herself to do to-day had in it very little of religion. Mrs. Brandeis
had been right about that. It was a test of endurance, as planned.
Fanny had never fasted in all her healthy life. She would come home from
school to eat formidable stacks of bread and butter, enhanced by brown
sugar or grape jelly, and topped off with three or four apples from the
barrel in the cellar. Two hours later she would attack a supper of fried
potatoes, and liver, and tea, and peach preserve, and more stacks of
bread and butter. Then there were the cherry trees in the back yard, and
the berry bushes, not to speak of sundry bags of small, hard candies
of the jelly-bean variety, fitted for quick and secret munching during
school. She liked good things to eat, this sturdy little girl, as did
her friend, that blonde and creamy person, Bella Weinberg. The two girls
exchanged meaningful glances during the evening service. The Weinbergs,
as befitted their station, sat in the third row at the right, and Bella
had to turn around to convey her silent messages to Fanny. The
evening service was brief, even to the sermon. Rabbi Thalmann and his
congregation would need their strength for to-morrow's trial.

The Brandeises walked home through the soft September night, and the
children had to use all their Yom Kippur dignity to keep from scuffling
through the piled-up drifts of crackling autumn leaves. Theodore went to
the cellar and got an apple, which he ate with what Fanny considered
an unnecessary amount of scrunching. It was a firm, juicy apple, and it
gave forth a cracking sound when his teeth met in its white meat. Fanny,
after regarding him with gloomy superiority, went to bed.

She had willed to sleep late, for gastronomic reasons, but the mental
command disobeyed itself, and she woke early, with a heavy feeling.
Early as it was, Molly Brandeis had tiptoed in still earlier to look at
her strange little daughter. She sometimes did that on Saturday mornings
when she left early for the store and Fanny slept late. This morning
Fanny's black hair was spread over the pillow as she lay on her back,
one arm outflung, the other at her breast. She made a rather startlingly
black and white and scarlet picture as she lay there asleep. Fanny
did things very much in that way, too, with broad, vivid, unmistakable
splashes of color. Mrs. Brande