The young man got rather red. "Ye-e-s!" he stammered. "Allow me to present you my card." He took it out of a little ivory case and handed it to her. It read, "Mr. Leonard James."
An amused smile flitted over Esther's face, passing into one of welcome.
She was not at all displeased to see him.
"Addie," she said. "This is Mr. Leonard James, a friend I used to know in my girlhood."
"Yes, we were boys together, as the song says," said Leonard James, smiling facetiously.
Addie inclined her head in the stately fashion which accorded so well with her beauty and resumed her investigation of the stalls. Presently she became absorbed in a tender reverie induced by the passionate waltz music and she forgot all about Esther's strange visitor, whose words fell as insensibly on her ears as the ticking of a familiar clock. But to Esther, Leonard James's conversation was full of interest. The two ugly ducklings of the back-pond had become to all appearance swans of the ornamental water, and it was natural that they should gabble of auld lang syne and the devious routes by which they had come together again.
"You see, I'm like you, Esther," explained the young man. "I'm not fitted for the narrow life that suits my father and mother and my sister. They've got no ideas beyond the house, and religion, and all that sort of thing. What do you think my father wanted me to be? A minister! Think of it! Ha! ha! ha! Me a minister! I actually did go for a couple of terms to Jews' College. Oh, yes, you remember! Why, I was there when you were a school-teacher and got taken up by the swells. But our stroke of fortune came soon after yours. Did you never hear of it? My, you must have dropped all your old acquaintances if no one ever told you that! Why, father came in for a couple of thousand pounds! I thought I'd make you stare. Guess who from?"
"I give it up," said Esther.
"Thank you. It was never yours to give," said Leonard, laughing jovially at his wit. "Old Steinwein—you remember his death. It was in all the papers; the eccentric old buffer, who was touched in the upper story, and used to give so much time and money to Jewish affairs, setting up lazy old rabbis in Jerusalem to shake themselves over their Talmuds. You remember his gifts to the poor—six shillings sevenpence each because he was seventy-nine years old and all that. Well, he used to send the pater a basket of fruit every Yomtov. But he used to do that to every Rabbi, all around, and my old man had not the least idea he was the object of special regard till the old chap pegged out. Ah, there's nothing like Torah, after all."
"You don't know what you may have lost through not becoming a minister," suggested Esther slily.
"Ah, but I know what I've gained. Do you think I could stand having my hands and feet tied with phylacteries?" asked Leonard, becoming vividly metaphoric in the intensity of his repugnance to the galling bonds of orthodoxy. "Now, I do as I like, go where I please, eat what I please. Just fancy not being able to join fellows at supper, because you mustn't eat oysters or steak? Might as well go into a monastery at once. All very well in ancient Jerusalem, where everybody was rowing in the same boat. Have you ever tasted pork, Esther?"