"What's the matter with you, cock?" "What else have you got? I won't have ham!" "What about fish and fried, saucy?" "Thank you!" Philip muttered gratefully. "What do you mean by it?" exclaimed Harry indignantly. "What do you want to spoil the show for?" "You can call me a blooming prig, if you like, and be blowed! I think ham's overdoing it, that's all! It's not playing the game!" "Don't be a kid! What's your objection to the miserable animal? I thought you'd got over all that!" "I thought so too, but I think a chap can choose another sort of day for ham! What's the good of piling it on like this?" "Do you mean," asked Harry, "that you've just shoved your head out of the burrow of superstitions, like a rabbit, and are going to dive down again, scared? I thought you were more consistent than that. Personally I should prefer beef, but I'm sacrificing my inclinations precisely because ham is a symbol." "It's not a symbol! I call it cheek!" "Cheek my fat aunt! You're funking it!" "You can say what you like! You can stuff your own mouth with the muck! I'm not going to choke for your sake!" "But what of all your wonderful talk about freedom and advancing with the new race," Segal asked quietly, "and all the good old moonshine?" "I just think, if you want a symbol, fried fish on _Yom Kippur_ is as useful as ham. It's what d'you call it? it's irreverent somehow, insisting on ham! Yes, that's it! It's irreverent!" "It's certainly expensive!" declared Segal with an air of finality. When the food came at last, the three boys hardly touched either ham or fish. They had, at least, stood up for the principle of emancipation! And ham, moreover, is a difficult commodity between unaccustomed jaws. "It's time I got back!" said Philip, at the point where Cambridge Street merged into more familiar territory. "He'll be getting restive about me!" "There's a comet in the offing!" declared Segal. "To-morrow night?" "To-morrow night, and let your ham rest quiet in your bellies!" Philip, after entering the _Polisher Shool_, spent a little time with his mother, not yet being of an age when a masculine presence raised perturbation in the women's section. When he advanced towards his own seat, his father frowned a question upon him. "_Nu_, and where so long?" "I've been feeling sick!" Philip replied truthfully. "Sit thee down then and open thy _machzer_! It is at this place one holds! Omit thou no word!" "I hope you are feeling all right, _tatte_?" "How should I feel? 'Tis well with me!"