“I came to make my monthly visit—evidently I’m not needed.”
Shmendrik faced the accusing eyes of the “friendly visitor.” “Holiday eating …”
“Oh—I’m glad you’re so prosperous.”
Before any one had gained presence of mind enough to explain things, the door had clanked. The “friendly visitor” had vanished.
“Pfui!” Hanneh Breineh snatched up her glass and drained its contents. “What will she do now? Will we get no more dry bread from the charities because once we ate cake?”
“What for did she come?” asked Sophie.
“To see that we don’t over-eat ourselves!” returned Hanneh Breineh. “She’s a ‘friendly visitor’! She learns us how to cook cornmeal. By pictures and lectures she shows us how the poor people should live without meat, without milk, without butter, and without eggs. Always it’s on the end of my tongue to ask her, ‘You learned us to do without so much, why can’t you yet learn us how to eat without eating?’”
The children seized the last crumbs of cake that Shmendrik handed them and rushed for the street.
“What a killing look was on her face,” said Sophie. “Couldn’t she be a little glad for your gladness?”
“Charity ladies—gladness?” The joy of the grape-wine still rippled in Hanneh Breineh’s laughter. “For poor people is only cornmeal. Ten cents a day—to feed my children!”