"Mamma, Mamma, hello!" She was sitting in the meagre light of the window. The kitchen around her was scrupulously clean. A pair of cheap steel-rimmed spectacles lay on her nose; she was reading the Yiddish version of the Bible, intended especially for women. "Fievele," she said, "thou shouldst be repeating thy _chumish_ now, thou shouldst not be here!" "I've got such a headache, Mamma," he murmured clasping his forehead with a somewhat exaggerated gesture. "I want to go out for a minute or two! I'm stuffed!" "But he said 'no'!" "I've finished now. I know it all. What more can I do?" "Thou must not think of it!" "Ah, let me," he said appealingly, "only a minute or two!" "What will he say to me, Feivele? Better go not!" "Oh, I'll be back straight away! Or I'll tell you what; you stand at the front door, and when he starts getting up wave your hand and I'll be back in a jiffy, long before he's down. Ah _do_, Mamma!" "If thou hast a headache it is best for thee to be outside!" she said uneasily. "Go then. But forget not the moment I wave to thee, thou art back!" Philip darted to the door. "One second!" she said, "here's an apple for thee! I got just one--for thee!" "What a lovely Mamma! Thank you, thank you!" It was a forlorn little figure stood at the Angel Street corner of Doomington Road. He saw the crowded tram-cars go up the road towards an urban simulation of moorland called "Baxter's Hill." But beyond it green, real country began ... and there was a river ... He saw the boys of Angel Street playing games with a positively weekday enthusiasm. He had wanted particularly to go and talk about Tennyson and things with Harry this afternoon! How much luckier a lot had been cast for Harry! There was a genial, vaguely terrifying unorthodoxy about his parents which sometimes verged upon the license of the sheerly Gentile. They carried money on Saturdays! Mrs. Sewelson put the kettle on the fire with her own hands on Saturdays. But he wouldn't change his own mother for a hundred anybody-else's mothers, he vowed, his eyes softening, his teeth biting into the apple she had given him. Would it be congenial to bite Mottele! No! that was girlish--and he'd have such a sweet, nasty taste. No! he'd just pommel him, the "dog's body" (he had heard the phrase on the lips of Lena Myer in description of a young gentleman who had transferred his attention from Miss Myer to another lady). Ah, one minute! What was that Mottele had said about going to attend a prayer-for-the-dead meeting at his auntie's house? Gosh! Here was an idea! S'elp me if Mottele wouldn't have to attend his own prayer-for-the-dead meeting! By heaven, Mottele had gone far enough! It was about time he got some of his own back! Surely, Mother was waving! Oh, yes, certainly she was! He doubled back like a rabbit surprised on the edge of a thicket. When his father entered the room he was safely mumbling away.