The Little Mixer | Page 3

boyish face lighting up with pleasure.
"It seems we are to have a white Christmas after all."
"Christmas!" she cried; "I wish I could never hear that word again."
"Well, I'm glad it comes only once a year. To-night ends my siege,
though. To-morrow night Stein goes on duty, and I come home for
dinner to stay. Rose, darling, you look all tired out. You 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