Meanwhile, to a gnawing consciousness of dinner-hour, had assembled the house of Kantor. Attuned to the intimate atmosphere of the tenement which is so constantly rent with cry of child, child-bearing, delirium, delirium-tremens, Leon Kantor had howled no impression into the motley din of things. Isadore, already astride his chair, well into center-table, for first vociferous tear at the four-pound loaf; Esther Kantor, old at chores, settled an infant into the high chair, careful of tiny fingers in lowering the wooden bib. "Papa, Izzy's eating first again." "Put down that loaf and wait until your mother dishes up or you'll get a potch you won't soon forget." "Say, pop--" "Don't 'say pop' me! I don't want no street-bum freshness from you!" "I mean, papa, there was an uptown swell in, and she bought one of them seventy-five-cent candlesticks for the first price," "_Schlemmil--Chammer!_" said Mr. Kantor, rinsing his hands at the sink. "Didn't I always tell you it's the first price times two when you see up-town business come in? Haven't I learned it to you often enough a slummer must pay for her nosiness?" There entered then, on poor shuffling feet, Mannie Kantor so marred in the mysterious and ceramic process of life that the brain and the soul had stayed back sooner than inhabit him. Seventeen in years, in the down upon his face, and in growth unretarded by any great nervosity of system, his vacuity of face was not that of childhood but rather as if his light eyes were peering out from some hinterland and wanting so terribly and so dumbly to communicate what they beheld to brain-cells closed against himself. At sight of Mannie, Leon Kantor, the tears still wetly and dirtily down his cheeks, left off his black, fierce-eyed stare of waiting long enough to smile, darkly, it is true, but sweetly. "Giddy-ap!" he cried. "Giddy-ap!" And then Mannie, true to habit, would scamper and scamper. Up out of the traplike stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor, disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm, triumphant, a violin of one string and a broken back. "See, Leon--what mamma got! A violin! A fiddle! Look--the bow, too, I found. It ain't much, baby, but it's a fiddle." "Aw, ma--that's my old violin--gimme--I want it--where'd you find--" "Hush up, Izzy! This ain't yours no more. See, Leon, what mamma brought you! A violin!" "Now, you little _Chammer_, you got a feedle, and if you ever let me hear you holler again for a feedle, by golly if I don't--" From his corner, Leon Kantor reached out, taking the instrument and fitting it beneath his chin, the bow immediately feeling, surely and lightly for string. "Look, Abrahm! He knows how to hold it! What did I tell you? A child that never in his life seen a fiddle, except a beggar's on the street!" Little Esther suddenly cantered down-floor, clapping her chubby hands. "Looky--looky--Leon!"