"Teacher, he don't," said Morris, with the beautiful candor which adorned all his conversation. "He hates us."
"But why, why?" demanded Miss Bailey.
"He hates the childrens," the still candid Morris explained, "the whiles they is Sheenies. He hates you the whiles you is Krisht."
"Rather an unfriendly attitude altogether," commented Teacher. "And how do you know he hates me because I'm a Christian?"
"My mamma tells me how it is. She says he has mads the whiles you is Krisht und makes all things what is loving mit Sheenies. My mamma says he is Russians; und Russians they don't makes like that mit Sheenies. Teacher, no ma'am, loving ain't what Russians makes mit us. They makes all things what is fierce."
"I know, I know," said Constance Bailey, and then—"What is the little boy's business?"
"Teacher, he's a fire-lighter."
"A fire-lighter," echoed Miss Bailey, with visions of arson before her eyes. "A fire-lighter, did you say?"
"Teacher, yiss, ma'am, he is a fire-lighter, but sooner he wants he could to come on the school the whiles he ain't got no bizzness on'y Saturdays."
And then Miss Bailey understood. She had heard of certain stranded waifs left high and dry when the ebb of Christianity receded before the flood of Judaism, and New York's great East Side, once a fashionable district, then claimed by a thrifty Irish element, became a Ghetto. It was the Jewish Sabbatical Law which gave the derelicts an opportunity to earn a few pennies every Saturday, for no orthodox Jew may kindle fire on the Sabbath. And no frugal Jew, even in the impossible circumstance of being able to afford it, will keep the stove alight all through Friday night. Hence he employs a Christian to do the work he would not stoop to.