Simon got up and left the table and the room.
Hannah kept back her tears before the servant. 'There!' she said. 'And now he's turned sulky and won't eat.'
'Didn't I say an obstinate pig? He's always been like that from a baby. But his stomach always surrenders.' He resumed his meal with a wronged air, keeping his spectacles on the table, for frequent nervous polishing.
Of a sudden the door reopened and a soldier presented himself—gun on shoulder. For a moment S. Cohn, devoid of his glasses, stared without recognition. Wild hereditary tremors ran through him, born of the Russian persecution, and he had a vague nightmare sense of the Chappers, the Jewish man-gatherers who collected the tribute of young Jews for the Little Father. But as Simon began to loom through the red fog, 'A gun on the Sabbath!' he cried. It was as if the bullet had gone through all his conceptions of life and of Simon.
Hannah snatched at the side-issue. 'I read in Josephus—Simon's prize for Hebrew, you know—that the Jews fought against the Romans on Sabbath.'
'Yes; but they fought for themselves—for our Holy Temple.'
'But it's for ourselves now,' said Simon. 'Didn't you always say we are English?'
S. Cohn opened his mouth in angry retort. Then he discovered he had no retort, only anger. And this made him angrier, and his mouth remained open, quite terrifyingly for poor Mrs. Cohn.
'What is the use of arguing with him?' she said imploringly. 'The War Office has been sensible enough to refuse him.'
'We shall see,' said Simon. 'I am going to peg away at 'em again, and if I don't get into the Mounted Infantry, I'm a Dutchman—and of the Boer variety.'