Flora pictured a clean-shaven, high-hatted, spectacled gentleman jumping out of a buggy, and the image became a fixture in her mind. "I won't marry anybody except a doctor," she would declare, with conscious avoidance of bad grammar, as it behooved a doctor's wife.
But what was to be done with father's opposition? Asriel Stroon had never been the man to yield, and now that he grew more devout every day, her case seemed hopeless. But then Flora was her father's daughter, and when she took a resolve she could not imagine herself otherwise than carrying it out, sooner or later.
Flora's thoughts were flowing in this direction when her father's gruff voice made itself heard from the dining-room below. It was the anniversary of his father's death. In former years he would have contented himself with obit services, at the synagogue; this time, however, he had passed the day in fasting and chanting psalms at home, in addition to lighting his own candle in front of the cantor's desk and reciting Kaddish for the departed soul, at the house of prayer. It touched Flora's heart to think of him fasting and praying all day, and, with her book in her hand, she ran down to meet him.
"Just comin' from the synagogue, papa?" she greeted him affectionately, in English. "This settles your fast, don't it?"
"It is not so easy to settle with Him, my daughter," he returned, in Yiddish, pointing to the ceiling. "You can never be through serving the Uppermost. Hurry up, Tamara!" he added, in the direction of the adjoining kitchen.
"You ain' goin' to say more Thilim[1] to-night, are you, pa?"
"Why, does it cost you too much?" he snarled good humoredly.
"Yes it does—your health. I won't let you sing again. You are weak and you got enough."
"Hush! It is not potato-soup; you can never have enough of it." He fell to tugging nervously at his white beard, which grew in a pair of tiny imperials. "Tamara! It's time to break the fast, isn't it?"
"You can wash your hands. Supper is ready," came the housekeeper's pleasant voice.