She stopped a moment, and a strange look came over her face—a look of communication with some distant spirit. When she spoke again, her words were unintelligible to most of the audience. Some of the Jewish vest-makers understood. And the Rev. Dunham Denning, who was a famous scholar, understood. But even those who did not were held spellbound by the swinging sonorous cadence. She stopped abruptly.
"It's Hebrew," she explained. "It's what my father taught me when I was a little girl. It's about the Promised Land—I can't say it in good English—I—"
"Unless I've forgotten my Hebrew," the Reverend Chairman said, stepping forward, "Miss Rayefsky has been repeating God's words to Moses as recorded in the third chapter of Exodus. I think it's the seventh verse:—
"'And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
"'And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.'"
"Yes. That's it," Yetta said. "Well, that's what strikes mean. We're fighting for the old promises."
"Pretty little thing, isn't she?" a blonde lady in Mrs. Van Cleave's box asked her neighbor.
"Not my style," he replied. "Even if you had no other charms, if you were humpbacked and cross-eyed, that hair of yours would do the trick with me. Haven't you a free afternoon next week, so we could get married?"
"I didn't know old Denning was so snappy with his Hebrew," another broke in.
"Which reminds me of a story—"
"Is it fit to listen to?" the blonde lady asked.