"Outside, at the foot of the steps," she recalled. "I would never have met you inside."
"Maybe I am lax," he acknowledged, "but it seems to me that if you are living a decent life yourself, and giving the other fellow a square deal, you are pretty nearly fulfilling the law and the prophets."
"And what do you suppose is happening to Hannah with a Christian Science family on one side and Roman Catholics on the other?" she demanded tragically. "She's decided not to take any more medicine, because Virginia Lawrence doesn't. And she has Nellie Halloran's every expression about the Virgin and the Saviour. Not only that, but she has made friends with a Christian Science practitioner through the Lawrences, and calls him 'my friend Mr. Jackson.' She runs to meet him and walks the length of the block with him every time he passes."
"Hannah is certainly a natural born mixer," laughed the father. "We are saving ourselves trouble by giving her the best there is to mix with!"
"Eli, I am afraid we made a mistake moving out here, away from all our people."
"No, we didn't make a mistake," he declared earnestly. "The Square was no place to bring up Hannah, among those parvenu Jews. We have the prettiest home on the heights and the best people in town for neighbors."
"Our child is losing her identity as a Jewess."
"Let her find it again as an American," he replied. "Frankly, Rose, I don't lose any sleep over trying to keep my identity as a Jew intact. If a Jew doesn't like it here, let him go back to Palestine or to the country that oppressed him, I say. I've got the same amount of patience with these hyphenated Americans as I have with the Jews who try to segregate themselves and dot the map with New Jerusalems. Where's the sense in throwing yourself into the melting-pot, glad of the chance, and then kicking because you come out something different?—Come on to bed, dear; you are as pale as a ghost, and I'm so tired I can't see straight. Our baby is all right. Don't you worry."
Snow falls on the just and the unjust. There was quite as much of it in Hannah's back yard as in either Virginia's or Nellie's—perhaps even a little more had drifted into the fence corners. Hannah's joy in discovering that in this respect she had not been slighted crowded her troubles into the background. Immediately after breakfast, bundled up snugly, she stood in her yard and threw snowballs toward her neighbors' homes, while she squealed with delight. In a very few minutes, three little girls were playing where only one had played before.