"One second!" she said, "here's an apple for thee! I got just one—for thee!"
"What a lovely Mamma! Thank you, thank you!"
It was a forlorn little figure stood at the Angel Street corner of Doomington Road. He saw the crowded tram-cars go up the road towards an urban simulation of moorland called "Baxter's Hill." But beyond it green, real country began ... and there was a river ... He saw the boys of Angel Street playing games with a positively weekday enthusiasm. He had wanted particularly to go and talk about Tennyson and things with Harry this afternoon! How much luckier a lot had been cast for Harry! There was a genial, vaguely terrifying unorthodoxy about his parents which sometimes verged upon the license of the sheerly Gentile. They carried money on Saturdays! Mrs. Sewelson put the kettle on the fire with her own hands on Saturdays. But he wouldn't change his own mother for a hundred anybody-else's mothers, he vowed, his eyes softening, his teeth biting into the apple she had given him.
Would it be congenial to bite Mottele! No! that was girlish—and he'd have such a sweet, nasty taste. No! he'd just pommel him, the "dog's body" (he had heard the phrase on the lips of Lena Myer in description of a young gentleman who had transferred his attention from Miss Myer to another lady). Ah, one minute! What was that Mottele had said about going to attend a prayer-for-the-dead meeting at his auntie's house? Gosh! Here was an idea! S'elp me if Mottele wouldn't have to attend his own prayer-for-the-dead meeting! By heaven, Mottele had gone far enough! It was about time he got some of his own back!
Surely, Mother was waving! Oh, yes, certainly she was! He doubled back like a rabbit surprised on the edge of a thicket. When his father entered the room he was safely mumbling away.
"Feivel, thou art panting!" said Reb Monash suspiciously.
"I've been crying!" replied Philip sullenly.
"So? Well, let me hear what thou dost with thy chumish now! Mind not one mistake, or thou wilt not stir from the house after Shabbos one step!"
Philip recited the portion with flawless accuracy. The week was duly ushered in with the night service of the Sabbath. It was dark when Philip made his way along Doomington Road and turned to the right past the Bridgeway Elementary School along the side of it skirted by Blenheim Road. The road led to a slightly loftier stratum of Doomington, past gloomy brick-crofts which rose into the muddy hills on one side and sank into clayey pools on the other, and it was along this road that Mottele was bound to pass after the service on his return home. Force of habit would lead him along the right side, from which the ground sloped downwards. Rain brought the yellow mud sluicing from the hills on the opposite side, rendering it therefore unpalatable for such delicate boots as Mottele's.
The red tongue of his enemy, a slight enough offence in itself, but by accident a consummation of so much preceding injury, had gone more venomously to Philip's heart than Mottele had intended. Disregarding the unwisdom of soiling his Saturday suit, Philip lay down to begin his vigil. Mottele was a long time in arriving. No doubt, Philip mused, he was sucking in the praise due to him for gratuitously walking up to Longton to take part in the service. Philip passed his fingernail down the notches in his stick. Twenty-five, twenty-six ... a dull anger stupefied him ... twenty-nine ... One after one in gibbering disorder, the occasions immortalized on the notched stick recreated themselves in his mind.