"Excellent fish, Mrs. Sugarman," he said, dexterously slipping some almonds behind his chair.
"What?" said Mrs. Sugarman, who was hard of hearing.
"First-class plaice!" shouted the Shalotten Shammos, negligently conveying a bunch of raisins.
"So they ought to be," said Mrs. Sugarman in her thin tinkling accents, "they were all alive in the pan."
"Ah, did they twitter?" said Mr. Belcovitch, pricking up his ears.
"No," Bessie interposed. "What do you mean?"
"At home in my town," said Mr. Belcovitch impressively, "a fish made a noise in the pan one Friday."
"Well? and suppose?" said the Shalotten Shammos, passing a fig to the rear, "the oil frizzles."
"Nothing of the kind," said Belcovitch angrily, "A real living noise. The woman snatched it out of the pan and ran with it to the Rabbi. But he did not know what to do. Fortunately there was staying with him for the Sabbath a travelling Saint from the far city of Ridnik, a Chasid, very skilful in plagues and purifications, and able to make clean a creeping thing by a hundred and fifty reasons. He directed the woman to wrap the fish in a shroud and give it honorable burial as quickly as possible. The funeral took place the same afternoon and a lot of people went in solemn procession to the woman's back garden and buried it with all seemly rites, and the knife with which it had been cut was buried in the same grave, having been defiled by contact with the demon. One man said it should be burned, but that was absurd because the demon would be only too glad to find itself in its native element, but to prevent Satan from rebuking the woman any more its mouth was stopped with furnace ashes. There was no time to obtain Palestine earth, which would have completely crushed the demon."
"The woman must have committed some Avirah" said Karlkammer.