Becky stared. 'She's dead,' she said.
'Yes, but her soul lives and watches over you. Come, Joseph, apple of my eye, come with me.'
She beckoned enticingly, but the little boy, imagining the invitation was to enter her bag and be literally carried away therein, set up a terrific howl. Thereupon the pretty young woman emerged hastily, and the child, with a great sob of love and confidence, ran to her and nestled in her arms.
'Mamma, mamma,' he cried.
Henry looked at the old woman with a triumphant smile.
Natalya went hot and cold. It was not only that little Joseph had gone to this creature. It was not even that he had accepted her maternity. It was this word 'mamma' that stung. The word summed up all the blasphemous foreignness of the new domesticity. 'Mamma' was redolent of cold Christian houses in whose doorways the old clo'-woman sometimes heard it. Fanny had been 'mother'—the dear, homely, Jewish 'mother.' This 'mamma,' taught to the orphans, was like the haughty parade of Christian elegance across her grave.
'When mamma's shoes are to be sold, don't forget me,' Natalya hissed. 'I'll give you the best price in the market.'
Henry shuddered, but replied, half pushing her outside: 'Certainly, certainly. Good-afternoon.'
'I'll buy them at your own price—ah, I see them coming, coming into my bag.'
The door closed on her grotesque sibylline intensity, and Henry clasped his wife tremblingly to his bosom and pressed a long kiss upon her fragrant cherry lips.