"Mine papa," commented Esther, "he's got it pretty hard," and she folded her hands in her lap and shook her head in unconscious but triumphant imitation of Mrs. Moriarty.
"Hear you me," Mrs. Moriarty acquiesced. "He has the hardest luck ever I heard of. His sister's husband's name was Cohen, and her Christian name"—Esther looked puzzled, and Mrs. Moriarty politely substituted—"her first name was Esther, the same as yours. And when your poor distracted father went to find out did e'er an Esther Cohen land the day she mentioned in the letter, they told him that twenty-five did, and for him to go away with his jokes. You know the world is full of Cohens."
Esther knew more than that. She knew that there was a Cohen in the house. She was not supposed to form friendships, but she cherished two or three in secret, and one of them bore the name of Cohen.
To Esther she was always "the lady mit the from-gold hair," but she had heard a neighbor once address her as Mrs. Cohen. She lived in what must have been, in the days of the house's grandeur, the "'tweeny's" room in the servants' quarters, on the top floor. A tiny little room it was, whose one window opened now upon a blank wall, though the 'tweeny may have sat at it and watched the locks and the slow canal-boats where now Canal Street runs. There in the dimness Esther, on her surreptitious way back from a surreptitious visit to the friendly Top Floor Front, had discovered the lady mit the from-gold hair, and the lady was crying.
Esther's heart swelled and almost burst beneath the square breastplate of her apron, and presently the lady, looking up, met two deep wells of sorrow and admiration fixed upon her. And so their friendship began. It persisted, despite Mrs. Moriarty's warnings, and despite, too, the barrier of alien tongue, for the speech of this stranger was greatly different from the Yiddish spoken in that Polish and Russian quarter. In the other wordless ways of love, however, she threw her lonely little heart at the feet of the lonely lady, and knew that another secret must lie between her and the home circle in the drawing-room.
The load of such deceptions upon her conscience was not heavy. There was only the kindly Top Floor Front, the janitor, and Rebecca Einstein, who lived next door, and who was in Esther's class at school, when she was not nursing old and new babies at home.
Mrs. Moriarty disapproved of the Einsteins. Her complaint was that there were too many of them, and that thirteen was an unlucky number for a party, whether family or otherwise. But to Esther their number was their greatest charm, and after a visit to their crowded and uproarious circle, the quiet drawing-room seemed very chill and empty.
When Jacob came home that night, Esther was awake and waiting for him with a proposition.
The Einsteins, she announced, had a superfluous baby. Would not he, out of his loving bounty, buy it for her? It was a boy, and she, Esther, desired beyond all things else a baby brother. She had reason to believe that this one was really hers. She had forwarded an application to the proper quarters.
Jacob took his little girl on his knee and explained the situation to her.