"Goin' to Europe! Are you crazy, papa? What are you talkin' about?"
"Just what you hear. After Passover I am going to Europe. I must take a look at Pravly."
"But you ain't been there over thirty-five years. You don't remember not'in' at all."
"I don't remember Pravly? Better than Mott Street; better than my nose. I was born there, my daughter," he added, as he drew closer to her and began to stroke her glossless black hair. This he did so seldom that the girl felt her heart swelling in her throat. She was yearning after him in advance.
Tamara stared in beaming amazement at the grandeur of the enterprise. "Are you really going?" she queried, with a touch of envy.
"What will you do there?—It's so far away!" Flora resumed, for want of a weightier argument at hand.
"Never mind, my child; I won't have to walk all the way."
"But the Russian police will arrest you for stayin' away so long. Didn't you say they would?"
"The kernel of a hollow nut!" he replied, extemporizing an equivalent of "Fiddlesticks!" Flora was used to his metaphors, although they were at times rather vague, and set one wondering how they came into his head at all. "The kernel of a hollow nut! Show a treif[2] gendarme a kosher[3] coin, and he will be shivering with ague. Long live the American dollar!"
She gave him a prolonged, far-away look, and said, peremptorily:—