"Ishoh?" "A woman!"
"Sachin?" "A knife!"
The door was flung open. A storm of flying apron-strings filled the threshold, and a cloud of loose hair. It was the mother of Jakey.
"Reb Monash, what is for such a thing?" she demanded indignantly. "One might think a policeman, not a rebbie. My poor Jakele, gentle as a dove, a credit in Israel! What for a new thing is this?"
Reb Monash lifted his hands deprecatingly. "What say you, Mrs. Gerber? An hour later he comes...."
She gave him no time to continue. "And then to lay about him with a walking-stick! A Tartar, not a Jew! Never a word of complaint from God or man about my poor orphan and ... to come to chayder ... and a pogrom! Oi, a shkandal! A walking-stick like a tree! A moujik, God should so help me, not a rebbie! Poor Jakele, crying his heart out like a dove! I'll take him away from a so crooked chayder!"
"But that concerns me little!" broke in Reb Monash. "For each one that goes, come four each time!" (This confident mathematic invariably puzzled Philip. He knew how necessary to the Massel family was an increased income. Why should not Reb Monash dismiss his whole chayder and then automatically increase his clientele fourfold?)
"Like a tree a walking-stick!" continued Mrs. Gerber. She flounced through the door. "Such a year! Such a black year shall seize you!" she spat. The door closed with a loud bang. It was impossible to sit down under it. Not only to have been assaulted, but to be accused of being the assailant was too much to bear. Reb Monash took his skull-cap, his yamelke, from his head, placed it on the mantelshelf, and assumed his silk hat.
"Learn over your passages!" he rapped out as he followed furiously to the house of Jakey.
There was subdued whispering at first.