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A still small voice broke in upon the storm. ‘But Simeon Samuels hasn’t a Christian partner,’ said Mrs. Mendel.

There was an embarrassed pause.

‘He has only his wife to help him,’ she went on. ‘I know, because I went to the shop Friday morning on pretence of asking for a cuckoo-clock.’

‘But a marine-dealer doesn’t sell clocks,’ put in the Parnass’s wife timidly. It was her first contribution to the conversation, for she was overpowered by her husband’s greatness.

‘Don’t be silly, Hannah!’ said the Parnass. ‘That was just why Mrs. Mendel asked for it.’

‘Yes, but unfortunately Simeon Samuels did have one,’ Mrs. Mendel confessed; ‘and I couldn’t get out of buying it.’

There was a general laugh.

‘Cut-throat competition, I call it,’ snarled Solomon Barzinsky, recovering from his merriment.

‘But you don’t sell clocks,’ said the Parnass.

‘That’s just it; he gets hold of our customers on pretence of selling them something else. The Talmudical prohibition cited by Mendel applies to that too.’

‘So I wasn’t so silly,’ put in the Parnass’s wife, feeling vaguely vindicated.

‘Well, you saw his wife,’ said the Parnass to Mendel’s wife, disregarding his own. ‘More than I’ve done, for she wasn’t in synagogue. Perhaps she is the Christian partner.’ His suggestion brought a new and holier horror over the card-table.

‘No, no,’ replied Mrs. Mendel reassuringly. ‘I caught sight of her frying fish in the kitchen.’

This proof of her Jewishness passed unquestioned, and the new-born horror subsided.

‘But in spite of the fish,’ said Mr. Mendel, ‘she served in the shop while he was at synagogue.’

‘Yes,’ hissed Barzinsky; ‘and in spite of the synagogue he served in the shop. A greater mockery was never known!’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ said the Parnass judicially. ‘If a man breaks one commandment, that’s no reason he should break two.’

‘But he does break two,’ Solomon thundered, smiting the green cloth with his fist; ‘for he steals my custom by opening when I’m closed.’

‘Take care–you will break my plates,’ said the Parnass. ‘Take a sandwich.’

‘Thank you–you’ve taken away my appetite.’

‘I’m sorry–but the sandwiches would have done the same. I really can’t expel a respectable seat-holder before I know that he is truly a sinner in Israel. As it is written, “Thou shalt inquire and make search and ask diligently.” He may have only opened this once by way of a send-off. Every dog is allowed one bite.’

‘At that rate, it would be permitted to eat a ham-sandwich–just for once,’ said Solomon scathingly.

‘Don’t say I called you a dog,’ the Parnass laughed.

‘A mezaire!’ announced the hostess hurriedly. ‘After all, it’s the Almighty’s business, not ours.’

‘No, it’s our business,’ Solomon insisted.

‘Yes,’ agreed the Parnass drily; ‘it is your business.’

III

The week went by, with no lull in the storm, though the plate-glass window was unshaken by the gusts. It maintained its flaunting seductiveness, assisted, people observed, by Simeon Samuels’ habit of lounging at his shop-door and sucking in the hesitating spectator. And it did not shutter itself on the Sabbath that succeeded.

The horror was tinged with consternation. The strange apathy of the pavement and the sky, the remissness of the volcanic fires and the celestial thunderbolts in face of this staring profanity, lent the cosmos an air almost of accessory after the fact. Never had the congregation seen Heaven so openly defied, and the consequences did not at all correspond with their deep if undefined forebodings. It is true a horse and carriage dashed into Peleg, the pawnbroker’s, window down the street, frightened, Peleg maintained, by the oilskins fluttering outside Simeon Samuels’ shop; but as the suffering was entirely limited to the nerves of Mrs. Peleg, who was pious, and to the innocent nose of the horse, this catastrophe was not quite what was expected. Solomon Barzinsky made himself the spokesman of the general dissatisfaction, and his remarks to the minister after the Sabbath service almost insinuated that the reverend gentleman had connived at a breach of contract.

The Rev. Elkan Gabriel quoted Scripture. ‘The Lord is merciful and long-suffering, and will not at once awaken all His wrath.’