The Little Mixer | Page 3

shouldn't wait up for me."
"It isn't that. It's Hannah. She cried for more than an hour to-night, and but for Mandy and her tales I believe she would still be crying." And she detailed the scene to him.
"But, good gracious, Rose, let Santa Claus bring her presents to her," said Eli, when she had finished. "Hannah's nothing but a baby."
"She is beginning to think for herself."
"As you did at a very early age," he reminded her, "and your father the strictest of orthodox rabbis. How old were you when you began slipping off to the reformed temple?"
"I broke my father's heart," she said somberly. "I'll be punished through Hannah."
"Not unless you let Hannah think faster than you do. And remember," he added teasingly, "if you hadn't run off to the reformed temple you would never have met me."
"Outside, at the foot of the steps," she recalled. "I would never have met you inside."
"Maybe I am lax," he acknowledged, "but it seems to me that if you are living a decent life yourself, and giving the other fellow a square deal, you are pretty nearly fulfilling the law and the prophets."
"And what do you suppose is happening to Hannah with a Christian Science family on one side and Roman Catholics on the other?" she demanded tragically. "She's decided not to take any more medicine, because Virginia Lawrence doesn't. And she has Nellie Halloran's every expression about the Virgin and the Saviour. Not only that, but she has made friends with a Christian Science practitioner through the Lawrences, and calls him 'my friend Mr. Jackson.' She runs to meet him and walks the length of the block with him every time he passes."
"Hannah is certainly a natural born mixer," laughed the father. "We are saving ourselves trouble by giving her the best there is to mix with!"
"Eli, I am afraid we made a mistake moving out here, away from all our people."
"No, we didn't make a mistake," he declared earnestly. "The Square was no place to bring up Hannah, among those parvenu Jews. We have the prettiest home on the heights and the best people in town for neighbors."
"Our child is losing her identity as a Jewess."
"Let her find it again as an American," he replied. "Frankly, Rose, I don't lose any sleep over trying to keep my identity as a Jew intact. If a Jew doesn't like it here, let him go back to Palestine or to the country that oppressed him, I say. I've got the same amount of patience with these hyphenated Americans as I have with the Jews who try to segregate themselves and dot the map with New Jerusalems. Where's the sense in throwing yourself into the melting-pot, glad of the chance, and then kicking because you come out something different?--Come on to bed, dear; you are as pale as a ghost, and I'm so tired I can't see straight. Our baby is all right. Don't you worry."
* * * * *
Snow falls on the just and the unjust. There was quite as much of it in Hannah's back yard as in either Virginia's or Nellie's--perhaps even a little more had drifted into the fence corners. Hannah's joy in discovering that in this respect she had not been slighted crowded her troubles into the background. Immediately after breakfast, bundled up snugly, she stood in her yard and threw snowballs toward her neighbors' homes, while she squealed with delight. In a very few minutes, three little girls were playing where only one had played before.
The two newcomers, Virginia Lawrence and Nellie Halloran, presented an interesting contrast. Virginia, slim, and tall for her age, with long, flat, yellow braids, handled the snow daintily, even gingerly. Nellie, fat and dimpled, her curls tousled into a flame colored halo, rolled over and over in the snow, and then shook herself like a puppy. Until the advent of Hannah, a subtle antagonism had existed between the two children. Virginia's favorite game was playing "lady" with a train floating gracefully behind her; Nellie's chief joy in life was seeing how long she could stand on her head, her short skirts obeying the laws of gravity all the while. Hannah, however, vibrated obligingly between the two sports, and kept the peace inviolate.
Romping in the snow is hard play, and presently the little girls sat panting on the top step of the Josephs' back porch. Immediately Nellie produced a string of amethyst colored beads from her coat pocket, with the announcement that she would say her prayers while resting.
"What kind of beads are those?" asked Hannah.
"Rosary beads, 'course," responded Nellie. "Hannah, you don't know anything."
"I do, too."
"Huh! you didn't even know about the Mother o' God until I told you."
"I reckon I thought God was an orphan," Hannah pleaded in extenuation. "But, what about God's