The truce was over. During Philip's first year at school it had already worn a little thin. The emotion of pride with which Reb Monash had seen his son enrolled among the scholars of Doomington School was now considerably reduced. Philip's second year at school seemed by no means likely to bear out his father's prognostications that the study of Gentile lore would so work upon his stubborn brain as to turn him with warmth towards the Yidishkeit of home and synagogue. Chayder was now out of the question. It was easy enough for Philip to plead home-work when a tentative invitation in that direction was held out, and he was now nearly fourteen years old, too fully fledged for the compass of chayder's wing.
Yet Reb Monash was certainly going to see that the boy's other duties were not neglected—his washings before food, his three several bodies of prayer at morning, noon and night, his rigid application to the matutinal phylacteries, his countless other duties. In the degree that Philip's enthusiasm for that whole aspect of his existence symbolized by his phylacteries flagged, a process considerably accelerated by the distintegrative tide of Socialism, Reb Monash himself determined that his son's feet should be held forcefully upon the precise road. He frequently threatened a visit to Mr. Furness, an issue to which Philip could not help looking forward with both pleasure and apprehension. Philip had come into contact with the Head Master on very few occasions, during one of which he was soundly snubbed for an effort to display to Mr. Furness how much more intimate was his knowledge of Shelley's philosophy than Mr. Furness'. Yet he felt that there was a faculty in Mr. Furness for seeing with those deep-set stone-blue eyes so deeply into a proposition that the difficult nature of his case would be manifest to him. He felt at the same time a little discomfort at the thought that the distinctly mediocre position he occupied in the fortnightly form lists might attain a prominence he did not desire. But, he reassured himself, there was always time to pick up in that line, when he felt like it; in the meanwhile his friendship with Sewelson was far more absorbing, particularly when it now became an occupation which involved a savour of the perils incident to big game hunting. In short, whenever the opportunity presented itself, he was in Sewelson's company, and whenever Reb Monash discovered the fact he received the punishment he risked.
Dan Jamieson had received a paltry hundred and thirty-five votes at the General Election. But he had brought a blush of intense pleasure and pride to Harry's cheeks by assuring him that to Harry he owed the odd thirty-five.
"The foäk canna stand oop agin a babe!" he declared. Philip was standing by at the time, shyly enough, and Jamieson added kindly, "and I expect another thirty-five voäts from thee, lad, next time we sets ball rollin'!"
Harry refused to let his friend forget the thirty-five votes which were due from him to the Socialist cause. "It's not enough for you," he insisted, "to talk to the chaps at the dinner hour. That's an average of a man a month. I know. I've been doing it. You'll have to get up and spout!"
"Don't be a fool, Harry! You know it's not my line! I'm not old enough, anyhow!"
"Fiddle! What about me?"
Philip's career as an orator began with a question he tried to ask at a Conservative meeting, with a mouth which felt as if it were dilated with an india-rubber ball. No one took the least notice. After many minutes his blush of discomfort faded away, but he swore fervently that he wasn't going to be such a blithering idiot next time. Some days later, when the tide of a Liberal orator's eloquence seemed to be momentarily checked, he burst in shrilly with a long premeditated question, "But what's the good of trying to patch the roof when the foundations are rotten?" The orator closed his mouth with a spasm of fright. A number of heavy democrats in the crowd said genially, "Good for you, sonny! That's stumped him! Yes, what d'you say to that?" they shouted to the orator, "What's the good of trying to patch the roof when the foundations are rotten?"
"My concern is not with children," said the orator unhappily, "I'm after the vote, the men with the vote. I leave it to the other parties to canvass the children!"
"Down with him, down with him!" a woman shrieked excitedly. "He wants to starve the kids!"