"It was Shmool's sister that married Hyam Robins, wasn't it, mother?" asked Milly, incautiously.
"Certainly not," thundered Malka. "I knew old Benjamin well, and he sent me a pair of chintz curtains when I married your father."
"Poor old Benjamin! How long has he been dead?" mused Reb Shemuel's wife.
"He died the year I was confined with my Leah——"
"Stop! stop!" interrupted Sam Levine boisterously. "There's Leah getting as red as fire for fear you'll blab out her age."
"Don't be a fool, Sam," said Leah, blushing violently, and looking the lovelier for it.
The attention of the entire company was now concentrated upon the question at issue, whatever it might be. Malka fixed her audience with her piercing eye, and said in a tone that scarce brooked contradiction: "Hyam Robins couldn't have married Shmool's sister because Shmool's sister was already the wife of Abraham the fishmonger."
"Yes, but Shmool had two sisters," said Mrs. Jacobs, audaciously asserting her position as the rival genealogist.
"Nothing of the kind," replied Malka warmly.
"I'm quite sure," persisted Mrs. Jacobs. "There was Phoeby and there was
Harriet."