"And suppose? If I did not take peppermint I should have the spasms. My poor sister Rosina, peace be upon him, who died of typhoid, suffered greatly from the spasms. It's in the family. She would have died of asthma if she had lived long enough. Nu, how goes it with thee?" she went on, suddenly remembering that Moses, too, had a right to be ill. At bottom, Malka felt a real respect for Moses, though he did not know it. It dated from the day he cut a chip of mahogany out of her best round table. He had finished cutting his nails, and wanted a morsel of wood to burn with them in witness of his fulfilment of the pious custom. Malka raged, but in her inmost heart there was admiration for such unscrupulous sanctity.
"I have been out of work for three weeks," Moses answered, omitting to expound the state of his health in view of more urgent matters.
"Unlucky fool! What my silly cousin Gittel, peace be upon him, could see to marry in thee, I know not."
Moses could not enlighten her. He might have informed her that olov hasholom, "peace be upon him," was an absurdity when applied to a woman, but then he used the pious phrase himself, although aware of its grammatical shortcomings.
"I told her thou wouldst never be able to keep her, poor lamb," Malka went on. "But she was always an obstinate pig. And she kept her head high up, too, as if she had five pounds a week! Never would let her children earn money like other people's children. But thou oughtest not to be so obstinate. Thou shouldst have more sense, Méshe; thou belongest not to my family. Why can't Solomon go out with matches?"
"Gittel's soul would not like it."
"But the living have bodies! Thou rather seest thy children starve than work. There's Esther,—an idle, lazy brat, always reading story-books; why doesn't she sell flowers or pull out bastings in the evening?"
"Esther and Solomon have their lessons to do."
"Lessons!" snorted Malka. "What's the good of lessons? It's English, not Judaism, they teach them in that godless school. I could never read or write anything but Hebrew in all my life; but God be thanked, I have thriven without it. All they teach them in the school is English nonsense. The teachers are a pack of heathens, who eat forbidden things, but the good Yiddishkeit goes to the wall. I'm ashamed of thee, Méshe: thou dost not even send thy boys to a Hebrew class in the evening."
"I have no money, and they must do their English lessons. Else, perhaps, their clothes will be stopped. Besides, I teach them myself every Shabbos afternoon and Sunday. Solomon translates into Yiddish the whole Pentateuch with Rashi."