Something that was not of the tenement, something vital, with which his old life had no concern, welled up in Gimpy at the touch. He caught her hand and held it.
“I will if you will sit here,” he said. He could not help it.
“Why, Jimmy?” She stroked back his shock of stubborn hair. Something glistened on her eyelashes as she looked at the forlorn little face on the pillow. How should Gimpy know that he was at that moment leading another struggling soul by the hand toward the light that never dies?
“’Cause,” he gulped hard, but finished manfully—“’cause I love you.”
Gimpy had learned the lesson of Christmas,
“And glory shone around.”
AS TOLD BY THE RABBI
Three stories have come to me out of the past for which I would make friends in the present. The first I have from a rabbi of our own day whom I met last winter in the far Southwest. The other two were drawn from the wisdom of the old rabbis that is as replete with human contradiction as the strange people of whose life it was, and is, a part. If they help us to understand how near we live to one another, after all, it is well. Without other comment, I shall leave each reader to make his own application of them.