“What does he look like? And his character?”
“Well, he's a little old gentleman, a widower. He wears spectacles, and he's got a bald head. He knows an' awful lot of theology, but in point of worldly wisdom he's as deficient as a child. Sometimes he's fairly good-natured, sometimes very severe. Generally he's absent-minded—up in the clouds.”
“Has he a long white beard?”
“He has a beard; but it's neither long nor white. It's short and black—though there may be a few white hairs scattered through it. There ought to be, considering his age. He's—Let me see. He's ten years older than my mother; and she was thirty years older than I. That would make him sixty-six.”
“I have never seen a rabbi; but I always thought they had long white beards, and wore gowns, and looked mysterious and awe-inspiring, like astrologers or alchemists.”
“There's nothing mysterious about my uncle,” said Elias, laughing, “unless it be his prodigious learning; and nothing awe-inspiring, except his temper. That's pretty quick. He wears an ordinary black coat and white cravat, like a Protestant minister's. You'd take him for a Protestant minister if you should pass him in the street.”
“And he isn't at all patriarchal or picturesque?”
“Alas, no; not that I have been able to discover.”
“Oh, dear; how disappointing!”
After another little pause, Christine said: “I haven't any brothers or sisters, either; and my mother died when I was three years old; and my father is a great home-body, too. Isn't it strange that our lives should have been so much alike? Only, you're a man and an artist; and I'm a girl and have nothing to do but to keep house. I wish I loved housekeeping as you do painting. But I don't; I hate it.”