“I suppose you met a good many Christian johnnies in Durlston, didn’t you?” queried Lottie, as she turned over the pages of an autograph album. “We don’t see many here. Ma doesn’t like them, because, as they are no good for matrimonial purposes, she thinks it is not much use knowing them. There’s one lives next door, Harold Brooke, and we sometimes meet him at the Earls Court Exhibition with some more fellows. Maud and I got stuck on the big wheel with them once, for more than an hour, and Ma was down below shouting up to us, and looking as wild as can be. Oh, it was such a lark, I can tell you! I must introduce you to the Brookes. Harold is rather good fun, and not so insipid as most _goyeshka_[2] fellows, but he’s got two stuck-up sisters, and they always pass us by with their noses in the air--because we happen to be Jews, I suppose. They have a cousin staying with them, Enid Wilton, who is rather a nice girl. She is studying music at the Academy, too, so I expect you will meet her there.” She sat down at the piano, and began to strum a popular ditty. Lottie always made it a rule to learn the latest song directly it came out; she would have considered it quite a crime to have played anything belonging to one of last season’s comic operas. Celia watched her as she played. She was a well-built girl of eighteen, with very dark hair and eyes, a slightly aquiline nose, and full red lips. Her forehead was low, and not particularly intelligent, and her mouth indicated sensuality. She wore a number of bangles at her wrists, which jingled and knocked against the keyboard as she played. The jingle quite irritated Celia, and she was not sorry when the gong sounded somewhere in the lower regions for supper, and Lottie closed the piano with a bang. The two girls went downstairs arm-in-arm. Lottie seemed inclined to be very friendly, and showed her affection in a somewhat demonstrative manner. As they were entering the dining-room, Mr. Friedberg passed in just before them, rubbing his hands dry from his ceremonial ablutions, and mumbling some prayers as he did so. Then he took some bread and dipped it in salt, whilst he said the Hebrew grace, after which he took his seat at the supper table. He was a short thick-set man with a grey beard; and he habitually wore a black velvet skull-cap. The other members of the family sat down with a great deal of chatter, and minus the grace. Mrs. Friedberg immediately collared the eldest boy, Montie, and ungently pushed him out of the room. “Go upstairs and wash your hands, you lazy young jackanapes!” she called out indignantly. “And take Victor with you, and ask Mary for a clean collar. How dare you come to table looking like chimney-sweeps! I am quite ashamed of them,” she added, turning to Celia, apologetically. “They give me more trouble than all the girls put together.”