"_Nu_, the _kinder_!" snorted Malka disdainfully. "And what will they give thee for it? Verily, not a thank you. In my young days we trembled before the father and the mother, and my mother, peace be upon him, _potched_ my face after I was a married woman. I shall never forget that slap--it nearly made me adhere to the wall. But now-a-days our children sit on our heads. I gave my Milly all she has in the world--a house, a shop, a husband, and my best bed-linen. And now when I want her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call it Yechezkel." Malka's voice became more strident than ever. She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the arrangement was a source of real vexation.
Moses could think of nothing better to say than to inquire how her present husband was.
"He overworks himself," Malka replied, shaking her head. "The misfortune is that he thinks himself a good man of business, and he is always starting new enterprises without consulting me. If he would only take my advice more!"
Moses shook his head in sympathetic deprecation of Michael Birnbaum's wilfulness.
"No, but I expect him back from the country every minute. I believe they have invited him for the _Pidyun Haben_ to-day."
"Thine own sense should have told thee. Is it not the thirty-first day since the birth? But of course he won't accept when he knows that my own daughter has driven me out of her house."
"You say not!" exclaimed Moses in horror.
"I do say," said Malka, unconsciously taking up the clothes-brush and thumping with it on the table to emphasize the outrage. "I told her that when Yechezkel cried so much, it would be better to look for the pin than to dose the child for gripes. 'I dressed it myself, Mother,' says she. 'Thou art an obstinate cat's head. Milly,' says I. 'I say there _is_ a pin.' 'And I know better,' says she. 'How canst thou know better than I?' says I. 'Why, I was a mother before thou wast born.' So I unrolled the child's flannel, and sure enough underneath it just over the stomach I found--"
"The pin," concluded Moses, shaking his head gravely.