itter--in his Sunday clothes. This was Levine
Schabelitz.

Molly Brandeis was selling a wash boiler to a fussy housewife who, in
her anxiety to assure herself of the flawlessness of her purchase, had
done everything but climb inside it. It had early been instilled in the
minds of Mrs. Brandeis's children that she was never to be approached
when busy with a customer. There were times when they rushed into the
store bursting with news or plans, but they had learned to control
their eagerness. This, though, was no ordinary news that had blanched
Theodore's face. At sight of the three, Mrs. Brandeis quietly turned
her boiler purchaser over to Pearl and came forward from the rear of the
store.

"Oh, Mother!" cried Theodore, an hysterical note in his voice. "Oh,
Mother!"

And in that moment Molly Brandeis knew. Emil Bauer introduced them,
floridly. Molly Brandeis held out her hand, and her keen brown eyes
looked straight and long into the gifted Russian's pale blue ones.
According to all rules he should have started a dramatic speech,
beginning with "Madame!" hand on heart. But Schabelitz the great had
sprung from Schabelitz the peasant boy, and in the process he had
managed, somehow, to retain the simplicity which was his charm. Still,
there was something queer and foreign in the way he bent over Mrs.
Brandeis's hand. We do not bow like that in Winnebago.

"Mrs. Brandeis, I am honored to meet you."

"And I to meet you," replied the shopkeeper in the black sateen apron.

"I have just had the pleasure of hearing your son play," began
Schabelitz.

"Mr. Bauer called me out of my economics class at school, Mother, and
said that----"

"Theodore!" Theodore subsided. "He is only a boy," went on Schabelitz,
and put one hand on Theodore's shoulder. "A very gifted boy. I hear
hundreds. Oh, how I suffer, sometimes, to listen to their devilish
scraping! To-day, my friend Bauer met me with that old plea, `You must
hear this pupil play. He has genius.' `Bah! Genius!' I said, and I swore
at him a little, for he is my friend, Bauer. But I went with him to his
studio--Bauer, that is a remarkably fine place you have there, above
that drug store; a room of exceptional proportions. And those rugs, let
me tell you----"

"Never mind the rugs, Schabelitz. Mrs. Brandeis here----"

"Oh, yes, yes! Well, dear lady, this boy of yours will be a great
violinist if he is willing to work, and work, and work. He has what you
in America call the