'Why, she can't spell "neuralgia,"' said Bloomah resentfully.
'And who wants to spell a thing like that? It's bad enough to feel it. Wait till you have babies and neuralgy of your own, and you'll see how you'll spell.'
'She can't spell "racked" either,' put in Daniel.
His mother turned on him witheringly. 'She didn't go to school with the _Meshummodim_.'
'What's your books for? You don't fry fish with books.' Mrs. Beckenstein wrested it away from her, and dashed it on the floor. The pencil-case rolled one way, the thimble another.
'But I can get to school for the afternoon attendance.'
'Madness! With your sister in agony? Have you no feelings? Don't let me see your brazen face before the Sabbath!'
Bloomah crept out broken-hearted. On the way to Becky's her feet turned of themselves by long habit down the miry street in which the red-brick school-building rose in dreary importance. The sight of the great iron gate and the hurrying children caused her a throb of guilt. For a moment she stood wrestling with the temptation to enter.
It was but for the moment. She might rise to the heresy of _hot_ fried fish in lieu of cold, but Becky's Sabbath altogether devoid of fried fish was a thought too sacrilegious for her childish brain.
From her earliest babyhood chunks of cold fried fish had been part of her conception of the Day of Rest. Visions and odours of her mother frying plaice and soles--at worst, cod or mackerel--were inwoven with her most sacred memories of the coming Sabbath; it is probable she thought Friday was short for frying-day.
With a sob she turned back, hurrying as if to escape the tug of temptation.
It was the alarmed cry of a classmate. Bloomah took to her heels, her face a fiery mass of shame and grief.
Towards midday Becky's fish, nicely browned and sprigged with parsley, stood cooling on the great blue willow-pattern dish, and Becky's neuralgia abated, perhaps from the mental relief of the spectacle.
When the clock struck twelve, Bloomah was allowed to scamper off to school in the desperate hope of saving the afternoon attendance.
The London sky was of lead, and the London pavement of mud, but her heart was aglow with hope. As she reached the familiar street a certain strangeness in its aspect struck her. People stood at the doors gossiping and excited, as though no Sabbath pots were a-cooking; straggling groups possessed the roadway, impeding her advance, and as she got nearer to the school the crowd thickened, the roadway became impassable, a gesticulating mob blocked the iron gate.