Moses could not enlighten her. He might have informed her that _olov hasholom_, "peace be upon him," was an absurdity when applied to a woman, but then he used the pious phrase himself, although aware of its grammatical shortcomings. "I told her thou wouldst never be able to keep her, poor lamb," Malka went on. "But she was always an obstinate pig. And she kept her head high up, too, as if she had five pounds a week! Never would let her children earn money like other people's children. But thou oughtest not to be so obstinate. Thou shouldst have more sense, Méshe; _thou_ belongest not to my family. Why can't Solomon go out with matches?" "Gittel's soul would not like it." "But the living have bodies! Thou rather seest thy children starve than work. There's Esther,--an idle, lazy brat, always reading story-books; why doesn't she sell flowers or pull out bastings in the evening?" "Esther and Solomon have their lessons to do." "Lessons!" snorted Malka. "What's the good of lessons? It's English, not Judaism, they teach them in that godless school. _I_ could never read or write anything but Hebrew in all my life; but God be thanked, I have thriven without it. All they teach them in the school is English nonsense. The teachers are a pack of heathens, who eat forbidden things, but the good Yiddishkeit goes to the wall. I'm ashamed of thee, Méshe: thou dost not even send thy boys to a Hebrew class in the evening." "I have no money, and they must do their English lessons. Else, perhaps, their clothes will be stopped. Besides, I teach them myself every _Shabbos_ afternoon and Sunday. Solomon translates into Yiddish the whole Pentateuch with Rashi." "Yes, he may know _Térah_" said Malka, not to be baffled. "But he'll never know _Gemorah_ or _Mishnayis_." Malka herself knew very little of these abstruse subjects beyond their names, and the fact that they were studied out of minutely-printed folios by men of extreme sanctity. "He knows a little _Gemorah_, too," said Moses. "I can't teach him at home because I haven't got a _Gemorah_,--it's so expensive, as you know. But he went with me to the _Beth-Medrash_, when the _Maggid_ was studying it with a class free of charge, and we learnt the whole of the _Tractate Niddah_. Solomon understands very well all about the Divorce Laws, and he could adjudicate on the duties of women to their husbands."