Mrs. Isaacs had no sooner made this inquiry than she became conscious of an environment of suppressed laughter; Mrs. Jacobs awoke to the situation a second later, and the two women stood suddenly dumbfounded, petrified, with arms akimbo, staring at each other.
The wise, if apocryphal, Ecclesiasticus, sagely and pithily remarked, many centuries before modern civilization was invented: Jest not with a rude man lest thy ancestors be disgraced. To this day the oriental methods of insult have survived in the Ghetto. The dead past is never allowed to bury its dead; the genealogical dust-heap is always liable to be raked up, and even innocuous ancestors may be traduced to the third and fourth generation.
Now it so happened that Mrs. Isaacs and Mrs. Jacobs were sisters. And when it dawned upon them into what dilemma their automatic methods of carte and tierce had inveigled them, they were frozen with confusion. They retired crestfallen to their respective parlors, and sported their oaks. The resources of repartee were dried up for the moment. Relatives are unduly handicapped in these verbal duels; especially relatives with the same mother and father.
Presently Mrs. Isaacs reappeared. She had thought of something she ought to have said. She went up to her sister's closed door, and shouted into the key-hole: "None of my children ever had bandy-legs!"
Almost immediately the window of the front bedroom was flung up, and
Mrs. Jacobs leant out of it waving what looked like an immense streamer.
"Aha," she observed, dangling it tantalizingly up and down. "Morry antique!"
The dress fluttered in the breeze. Mrs. Jacobs caressed the stuff between her thumb and forefinger.
"Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk," she announced with a long ecstatic quaver.
Mrs. Isaacs stood paralyzed by the brilliancy of the repartee.
Mrs. Jacobs withdrew the moiré antique and exhibited a mauve gown.