'If my Ezekiel were only a few years older!' she added musingly. 'Oh, but I am not a great lady,' said Esther, hastening to disclaim false pretensions to the hand of the hero of the hoop; 'I've left the Goldsmiths, and come back to live in the East End.' 'What!' said Malka, 'left the West End!' Her swarthy face grew darker; the skin about her black eyebrows was wrinkled with wrath. 'Are you _meshuggah_?' she asked after an awful silence. 'Or have you, perhaps, saved up a tidy sum of money?' Esther flushed and shook her head. 'Then it's no use coming to me. I'm not a rich woman, far from it, and I have been blessed with _Kinder_ who are helpless without me. It's as I always said to your father. "Méshe," I said, "you're a _Schnorrer_, and your children'll grow up _Schnorrers_."' Esther turned white, but the dwindling of Malka's semi-divinity had diminished the old woman's power of annoying her. 'I want to earn my own living,' she said, with a smile that was almost contemptuous. 'Do you call that being a _Schnorrer_?' 'Don't argue with me. You're just like your poor mother--peace be upon him!' cried the irate old woman. 'You God's fool! you were provided for in life, and you have no right to come upon the Family.' 'But isn't it _schnorring_ to be dependent on strangers?' inquired Esther with bitter amusement. 'Don't stand there with your impudence-face!' cried Malka, her eyes blazing fire. 'You know as well as I do that a _Schnorrer_ is a person you give sixpences to. When a rich family takes in a motherless girl like you and clothes her and feeds her, why, it's mocking Heaven to run away and want to earn your own living! Earn your living! Pooh! what living can you earn, you with your gloves? You're all by yourself in the world now--your father can't help you any more. He did enough for you when you were little, keeping you at school when you ought to have been out selling matches. You'll starve and come to me, that's what you'll do.'