"Follow your heart, my little one," said Reb Shemuel. "It is a good heart and it will not lead you wrong."
Hannah turned away to hide the tears that could no longer be stayed. Her father resumed his reading of the Law.
But he had got through very few verses ere he felt a soft warm arm round his neck and a wet cheek laid close to his.
"Father, forgive me," whispered the lips. "I am so sorry. I thought, that—that I—that you—oh father, father! I feel as if I had never known you before to-night."
"What is it, my daughter?" said Reb Shemuel, stumbling into Yiddish in his anxiety. "What hast thou done?"
"I have betrothed myself," she answered, unwittingly adopting his dialect. "I have betrothed myself without telling thee or mother."
"To whom?" he asked anxiously.
"To a Jew," she hastened to assure him, "But he is neither a Talmud-sage nor pious. He is newly returned from the Cape."
"Ah, they are a link lot," muttered the Reb anxiously. "Where didst thou first meet him?"
"At the Club," she answered. "At the Purim Ball—the night before Sam
Levine came round here to be divorced from me."