And Mendel thought that England was indeed best. For him, then, England meant his mother's kitchen, with its odd decorations from Tottenham Court Road, its dresser crammed with gilded china and fringed with cut green paper, its collection of his early pictures, almost all hanging crooked, and the hard wooden chair in which Golda sat all day long with her hands on her stomach, dreaming and brooding of her life, which through all her hardships had been sweet because of her beautiful child whom everybody loved and spoiled, as she herself loved and spoiled him because he was not like other children. England was best because it could contain that peace and that beauty, and there was nothing in England to harm it or in envy to destroy it. Mendel could understand his brother wanting to come back to it; for he, too, from all his adventures, returned to its simplicity for strength and comfort. Moscowitsch came in with a Jewish paper. He was in a terrible state of anger and hatred. His eyes flashed and his nostrils quivered as he read out how a Jew in Russia had been accused of killing a Christian boy for his blood, and how over a thousand Jews had been massacred on the instigation of the police. "It grows worse and worse," he said. "The Jews do not kill. It is the Christians who lust for blood. It is the Christians who are so wicked and dishonest that, when they must be found out, they say it is the Jews, or that the Jews are more wicked than they. It is impossible. But England is good to the Jews. England must send soldiers to Russia or the Jews will be all murdered." "Yes, it is bad in Russia," said Golda, nodding her head. "But life is bad everywhere for good people. Only in England one is left alone." "Well, Mr. Artist!" said Moscowitsch genially. "Made your fortune yet?" "No," replied Mendel; "but I have been to Paris for my holidays and I stayed in a hotel. Three of us spent twenty pounds." "So?" said Moscowitsch, impressed. "Have you made it up with the Birnbaum, then?" "No." "That is not the way to get on, to quarrel with money." "If he wants money," said Golda, "he can always get it. What more do you want? There are some letters for you, Mendel." He opened his letters, and had the satisfaction of telling Moscowitsch that he was asked to paint a portrait for thirty pounds. "Who is it?" asked Moscowitsch. "A lord?" He had an idea that only lords had their portraits painted by hand. "That's better," he said. "That's better than painting those pictures that nobody wants. You paint what they ask you and you'll soon make your fortune, and be able to give your mother dresses covered with beads and tickets for the theatre and china ornaments. And you can be thankful you don't live in Russia. They wouldn't let you be an artist there. If you became a student they would send you off to Siberia and you would die in the snow."