"I hate him!" Philip was saying to Harry, "I hate him!" His face was still wet with tears of vexation. His fists were clenched and his jaws were set viciously. He had only escaped that evening by slipping out through the front door after opening it for a septuagenarian panegyrist of Mottele. "He's only a liar and a sucker-up!" he exclaimed. "He does it for just what he can get out of it! Thinks I can't see! Yah!" he growled in disgust. "But listen!" said Harry, "Just listen to this! _How could I look upon the day? They should have stabb'd me where I lay, Oriana-- They should have trod me into clay, Oriana!_ What do you think of that? Isn't it fine? He seems to have had a rottener time even than Mottele's giving you! But isn't it grand stuff?" "Yes, I know, I know! But tell me what I can do! I hate him! I want to kill him!" Harry looked up reflectively. "Kill him?" he asked. "Stab him where he lies, Oriana! That's an idea, Philip! I can lend you a peashooter. Or, why not try a gonfalon? Gonfalons are awfully tricky!" "You're laughing!" said Philip indignantly. "I wish you came to our _chayder_, you wouldn't laugh then, I can tell you!" "But you talked about killing yourself, didn't you? Really, I don't know what to say! Kill him or try to forget about him!" "Oh God, God!" said Philip, banging his forehead in despair. "It's so miserable! While I'm being half killed, he sits smiling and wiping his rotten nose!" Harry looked up sympathetically. "Else you could run away and be Two Little Vagabonds!" he suggested. "Don't want to run away! He'd swank like one o'clock, the pig!" Philip said morosely. "Besides," he added in a slightly altered tone, "don't want to run away from mother! She'd be lonely! Oh, Harry, you're no help to a chap, you aren't!" Yet the conversation was not wholly fruitless. It implanted in Philip the germ of more than one idea. "_Rebbie_," said Mottele at dinner one Saturday afternoon, "my uncle, peace-be-upon-him, died on Thursday, no? I want to go and join the _minyon_ at my auntie's house to-night." "What good art thou at a minyon? Thou canst not make a tenth! Thou art in years still far from thy thirteenth year." "But all the same it's a _mitzvah_?" "Ah, true, true!" said Reb Monash, his eye full of benignant appreciation. "Go thou then. Thou art no big one and they will make room for thee. Bring thou in the best bread thou hast forgotten, Chayah," he said turning to his wife. She rose and entered the parlour where Reb Monash kept the "best bread" locked in the sideboard. She placed the bread dutifully before her husband. It had latterly become the custom for Mottele to join the Massel family for dinner on the Sabbath mid-day. Reb Monash felt that his punctilious washing before meals, his prayers before food and his evident appreciation of the long blessing after food, could have nothing but the most exemplary effect upon Philip.