Thus, therefore, though they were on conversational terms with each other, as a man might be with a youth he disliked or feared but in whom he was compelled to take an interest, out of loyalty towards a dead friend, invariably the awakening of Reb Monash brought about the dissolution of such a cherry-séance as I have spoken of. For Mrs. Massel and her son had now made a tacit pact by which Philip always came home from Doomington School via Angel Street instead of by the upper road to Longton called Brownel Gap. It meant an uninterrupted hour with his mother, and these months, howsoever disastrous and dark the day might be before and after this golden hour, were their halcyon days. "And yet," apprehensively muttered Philip to himself, "how thin she is getting!" "Mother!" he would say, "Aren't you well? Can't you take something? You don't look half so--you know--half so fat and jolly as ordinary mothers do. Look at Alec Segal's mother! She adds another chin every month and she keeps on getting further out in front! You don't! What'll we do about it, mother; it can't go on, you know!" "Channah, God bless her!" she would reply, "out of her hard-earned wages--and you know how much he makes her bring into the house--and then her new dress she's bought for Betsy's wedding, it's all purple like wine, a _par-shane_, that's what the dear girl looks, a beauty straight out of the picture book! Vesta Tilley me thou no Vesta Tilleys! Going on the stage like a boy, smoking cigarettes! But she always wears wigs! Perhaps she wants to make herself out a daughter of Israel, with her wearing wigs! Well, if she ever dresses up like an honest woman, I say Channah's new back comb, even if it hasn't got real diamonds, is just as lovely as Vesta Tilley's! Don't forget the sugar in thy tea, Feivele!" "Yes, right, mother! But what about Channah, her hard-earned wages?" "Oh yes! My head, my head! Thou dost not get thy brains from my old silly head, Feivele! _Nu_, where were we! _Yah_! I was saying, out of her hard-earned wages, cod-liver oil she buys me, and sometimes two fresh eggs she buys me! The extravagant girl, two fresh eggs! Make me a poetry out of two fresh eggs! It's all right making poetry out of trees and rivers! Thou hast ever seen trees and rivers, yes? No! Ah, those were _takke_ trees by the Dneister, and that was a river in a thousand! Will I ever smell again the grass in the fields by the river, when they cut it and it lies in heaps, and the moon, it comes up like a feather! This is not for me, Feivele! But when I'm dead, Feivele...." "No, no, no, mother! Look here, I don't think you ought to talk like that! It isn't sensible!"