But that afternoon saw the beginning of a friendship which added one to the many factors which were moulding the future woman. For Debby turned out a very mild bogie, indeed, with a good English vocabulary and a stock of old _London Journals_, more precious to Esther than mines of Ind. Debby kept them under the bed, which, as the size of the bed all but coincided with the area of the room, was a wise arrangement. And on the long summer evenings and the Sunday afternoons when her little ones needed no looking after and were traipsing about playing "whoop!" and pussy-cat in the street downstairs, Esther slipped into the wee back room, where the treasures lay, and there, by the open window, overlooking the dingy back yard and the slanting perspectives of sun-decked red tiles where cats prowled and dingy sparrows hopped, in an atmosphere laden with whiffs from a neighboring dairyman's stables, Esther lost herself in wild tales of passion and romance. She frequently read them aloud for the benefit of the sallow-faced needle-woman, who had found romance square so sadly with the realities of her own existence. And so all a summer afternoon, Dutch Debby and Esther would be rapt away to a world of brave men and fair women, a world of fine linen and purple, of champagne and wickedness and cigarettes, a world where nobody worked or washed shirts or was hungry or had holes in boots, a world utterly ignorant of Judaism and the heinousness of eating meat with butter. Not that Esther for her part correlated her conception of this world with facts. She never realized that it was an actually possible world--never indeed asked herself whether it existed outside print or not. She never thought of it in that way at all, any more than it ever occurred to her that people once spoke the Hebrew she learned to read and translate. "Bobby" was often present at these readings, but he kept his thoughts to himself, sitting on his hind legs with his delightfully ugly nose tilted up inquiringly at Esther. For the best of all this new friendship was that Bobby was not jealous. He was only a sorry dun-colored mongrel to outsiders, but Esther learned to see him almost through Dutch Debby's eyes. And she could run up the stairs freely, knowing that if she trod on his tail now, he would take it as a mark of _camaraderie_.

 

"I used to pay a penny a week for the _London Journal_," said Debby early in their acquaintanceship, "till one day I discovered I had a dreadful bad memory."

 

"And what was the good of that?" said Esther.

 

"Why, it was worth shillings and shillings to me. You see I used to save up all the back numbers of the _London Journal_ because of the answers to correspondents, telling you how to do your hair and trim your nails and give yourself a nice complexion. I used to bother my head about that sort of thing in those days, dear; and one day I happened to get reading a story in a back number only about a year old and I found I was just as interested as if I had never read it before and I hadn't the slightest remembrance of it. After that I left off buying the _Journal_ and took to reading my big heap of back numbers. I get through them once every two years." Debby interrupted herself with a fit of coughing, for lengthy monologue is inadvisable for persons who bend over needle-work in dark back rooms. Recovering herself, she added, "And then I start afresh. You couldn't do that, could you?"

 

"No," admitted Esther, with a painful feeling of inferiority. "I remember all I've ever read."

 

"Ah, you will grow up a clever woman!" said Debby, patting her hair.

 

"Oh, do you think so?" said Esther, her dark eyes lighting up with pleasure.

 

"Oh yes, you're always first in your class, ain't you?"

 

"Is that what you judge by, Debby?" said Esther, disappointed. "The other girls are so stupid and take no thought for anything but their hats and their frocks. They would rather play gobs or shuttlecock or hopscotch than read about the 'Forty Thieves.' They don't mind being kept a whole year in one class but I--oh, I feel so mad at getting on so slow. I could easily learn the standard work in three months. I want to know everything--so that I can grow up to be a teacher at our school."

 

"And does your teacher know everything?"

 

"Oh yes! She knows the meaning of every word and all about foreign countries."

 

"And would you like to be a teacher?"

 

"If I could only be clever enough!" sighed Esther. "But then you see the teachers at our school are real ladies and they dress, oh, so beautifully! With fur tippets and six-button gloves. I could never afford it, for even when I was earning five shillings a week I should have to give most of it to father and the children."

 

"But if you're very good--I dare say some of the great ladies like the Rothschilds will buy you nice clothes. I have heard they are very good to clever children."

 

"No, then the other teachers would know I was getting charity! And they would mock at me. I heard Miss Hyams make fun of a teacher because she wore the same dress as last winter. I don't think I should like to be a teacher after all, though it is nice to be able to stand with your back to the fire in the winter. The girls would know--'" Esther stopped and blushed.

 

"Would know what, dear?"

 

"Well, they would know father," said Esther in low tones. "They would see him selling things in the Lane and they wouldn't do what I told them."

 

"Nonsense, Esther. I believe most of the teachers' fathers are just as bad--I mean as poor. Look at Miss Hyams's own father."

 

"Oh Debby! I do hope that's true. Besides when I was earning five shillings a week, I could buy father a new coat, couldn't I? And then there would be no need for him to stand in the Lane with lemons or 'four-corner fringes,' would there?"

 

"No, dear. You shall be a teacher, I prophesy, and who knows? Some day you may be Head Mistress!"

 

Esther laughed a startled little laugh of delight, with a suspicion of a sob in it. "What! Me! Me go round and make all the teachers do their work. Oh, wouldn't I catch them gossiping! I know their tricks!"

 

"You seem to look after your teacher well. Do you ever call her over the coals for gossiping?" inquired Dutch Debby, amused.

 

"No, no," protested Esther quite seriously. "I like to hear them gossiping. When my teacher and Miss Davis, who's in the next room, and a few other teachers get together, I learn--Oh such a lot!--from their conversation."

 

"Then they do teach you after all," laughed Debby.

 

"Yes, but it's not on the Time Table," said Esther, shaking her little head sapiently. "It's mostly about young men. Did you ever have a young man, Debby?"

 

"Don't--don't ask such questions, child!" Debby bent over her needle-work.

 

"............