"Mottele, oh, an Israel glory is Mottele!"
"Mottele, Mottele, Mottele! ..."
Curse Mottele ... the "dog's body"! And here was Mottele turning round the bend in the road, his detestable little figure caught in the rays of a lamp. Good, good! He was bound to pass that way. He slid his body a couple of yards cautiously. That brought him nearly to the deep part of the pond ... Two feet deep, at most, but that would do! Ah, glory to God, here he was!
It was over surprisingly quickly. He rushed out upon the unsuspecting Mottele, fell upon him and dragged him irresistibly over the edge of the pavement towards the pond. They swung there for a moment or two against its edge. Philip felt Mottele's fingers tighten in his hair. Mottele seemed to remove not only his cap but half his scalp. The next moment Mottele lay squelching in the ooze.
"Yah, Israel's glory, how d'you like that? Yah, dog's body!"
There was a spluttering. Then in Yiddish, "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will show thee!" In English followed, "Yer bloody bastard!"
But a sudden and ghastly fear had gripped Philip. A realization of the enormity of his crime possessed him. He swept the grass blindly for a cap, lifted it, and ran down the Blenheim Road, his heart thumping in a tumult of dismay.
He had been in the house for about twenty minutes when Reb Monash asked: "Feivel, whose cap art thou wearing?"
Philip took his cap off. With a grimace he discovered it was Mottele's. He'd know sooner or later anyhow. It was quite useless to lie about it.
"Mottele's!" he replied.