He had seen her dead in dreams, but never so pale, so shrunken as now, her mouth retaining little if any at all of the weak, warm milk Channah was lifting on a spoon. An ague shivering visited his whole body. Clearly he brought her to mind as she hovered round him with cherries and tea on those immortal afternoons; he saw her struggling with the Acroceraunian mountains, her lips humorously twisting to shape the alien syllables. He remembered the quiet pride with which, long ago, she had regarded Reb Monash as he sat oracular in his chair, his admirers drinking with reverent avidity the wine of wisdom flowing from his lips. The boy's throat shook with harsh, suppressed sobs. Channah spoke. "Philip, she's calling to you!" Not a tear had risen to his eyes. He bent over his mother with a wan smile. Weakly, slowly, she spoke. He knew that she had been lying there, waiting to summon up the strength with which to frame a few words. "_Nu_, Feivele, my own one. Art thou feeling stronger for being away?" "Mother, loved one," he replied in her own Yiddish. "Yes, stronger. But I had rather I had been with thee!" "Speak not thus! I was happy to think of thee among the fields. Didst thou have a special egg a day and milk?" "I did! But no, mother, thou must not talk more! Thou art not strong now, but wait, wait ... when thou art better...." "Be thou not a child! Feivele, I am going ... going...." The words were smothered in a tiny dry coughing. Channah came forward to help her. He turned his head away from the forlorn struggle. Reb Monash had been to the _Polisher Shool_ for minchak. He returned, and stood at the door, large-eyed, haunted. "Thou art back, Feivele?" he said. He seemed to be searching for further words, but nothing came. The voice seemed to Philip to strike against his skin, then to fall away dully to the floor. "Yes, _tatte_, yes," he said mechanically, and the abstract sphere in which his mother dying and his grief and himself seemed to be encrystalled, closed round him again in separating completeness. All day greedily he remained with her, knowing with a mournful exultance that when she gathered strength she would say a few words to him; yet when these moments came, saying "Hush, mamma, not now! Sweetest, hush!" bending over her, faintly touching her forehead. A long time had passed, and he was conscious not merely of hunger, but of a concrete clawed weakness tearing at the pit of his stomach, before he allowed Channah to take him into the kitchen and cut some slices of bread and butter for him and fill a pint mug with tea. Dorah was there putting washed plates on the shelves, and as Channah sat down at the table, she moved away to the parlour to take her place. Channah was sitting opposite to him, herself sipping tea, not with any interest, but because she knew that nothing had crossed her lips since morning.