'Dear Mother,
'A son. Send Bloomah.
'Briny.'
Sometimes these messages were mournfully inverted:
'Dear Mother,
'Poor little Rachie is gone. Send Bloomah to your heart-broken
'Becky.'
Occasionally the post-card went the other way:
'Dear Becky,
'Send back Bloomah.
'Your loving mother.'
The care of her elder brother Daniel was also part of Bloomah's burden; and in the evenings she had to keep an eye on his street sports and comrades, for since he had shocked his parents by dumping down a new pair of boots on the table, he could not be trusted without supervision.
Not that he had stolen the boots—far worse! Beguiled by a card cunningly printed in Hebrew, he had attended the evening classes of the Meshummodim, those converted Jews who try to bribe their brethren from the faith, and who are the bugbear and execration of the Ghetto.
Daniel was thereafter looked upon at home as a lamb who had escaped from the lions' den, and must be the object of their vengeful pursuit, while on Bloomah devolved the duties of shepherd and sheep-dog.
It was in the midst of all these diverse duties that Bloomah tried to go to school by day, and do her home lessons by night. She did not murmur against her mother, though she often pleaded. She recognised that the poor woman was similarly distracted between domestic duties and turns at the machines upstairs.
Only it was hard for the child to dovetail the two halves of her life. At night she must sit up as late as her elders, poring over her school books, and in the morning it was a fierce rush to get through her share of the housework in time for the red mark. In Mrs. Beckenstein's language: 'Don't eat, don't sleep, boil nor bake, stew nor roast, nor fry, nor nothing.'