"Pinchas she means," said her mother. "The poet!"
Reb Shemuel looked at her gravely. This did not sound promising.
"Why dost thou speak so harshly of thy fellow-creatures?" he said. "The man is a scholar and a poet, such as we have too few in Israel."
"We have too many Schnorrers in Israel already," retorted Hannah.
"Sh!" whispered Reb Shemuel reddening and indicating his guest with a slight movement of the eye.
Hannah bit her lip in self-humiliation and hastened to load the lucky
Pole's plate with an extra piece of fish.
"He has written me a letter," she went on.
"He has told me so," he answered. "He loves thee with a great love."
"What nonsense, Shemuel!" broke in Simcha, setting down her coffee-cup with work-a-day violence. "The idea of a man who has not a penny to bless himself with marrying our Hannah! They would be on the Board of Guardians in a month."
"Money is not everything. Wisdom and learning outweigh much. And as the Midrash says: 'As a scarlet ribbon becometh a black horse, so poverty becometh the daughter of Jacob.' The world stands on the Torah, not on gold; as it is written: 'Better is the Law of Thy mouth to me than thousands of gold or silver.' He is greater than I, for he studies the law for nothing like the fathers of the Mishna while I am paid a salary."