"Oh, hell, Harry, don't you understand? Don't you see ... see how I'm..." But the words were drowned in a fresh and prolonged peal. Harry walked away from him impatiently. It was fortunate that _meyeriv_, the evening service, had been rendered and the _kaddish_ intoned. Philip now realized clearly that the laughter was entirely out of his control and that it would be fatal to re-enter the kitchen. Although the main attack had subsided, bubbles of laughter still boiled in his throat and issued from his lips in ragged shrieks. Utterly prostrated, he determined that the only thing he could do was to go to bed at once, and he fell asleep with his own laughter ringing lamentably in his ears. CHAPTER XV Three times daily for the following seven days, a little community, necessarily never less than ten adults, and frequently intersprinkled with a few of those more pious _chayder_ boys who wished specially to commend themselves to their _rebbie_, gathered for _davenning_ in the Angel Street kitchen; the visitors on sofa and chairs, Reb Monash and Philip on low stools; the mourners uttering their _kaddish_, the visitors chiming amen with devout promptitude. _Davenning_, perhaps by some deliberate charitable intention, seemed to take up most of the day, and effectively chequered Philip's moods of stagnant melancholy with the need for definite action and a brave show in the eyes of the world. Benjamin, Dorah's husband, a meek, pale-haired man, whose will had always been a useful and docile implement in the hands of his wife, attended the _minyon_ with complete regularity, a praiseworthy fact in virtue of the commercial travelling which took him into far outlying villages. Dorah herself returned to Longton, leaving Philip in Angel Street for the period of the _shiveh_. After the first week the family was permitted to resume ordinary chairs, but for a whole month the unshaved cheeks of Philip Massel testified biblically to his loss. Yet _kaddish_ was not at end. Three times a day for the ensuing eleven months the prayer was to be uttered in one synagogue or another. And year after year thereafter candles were to be lit on the eve of the anniversary of the death and _kaddish_ three times uttered next day.