parts of the house. Even the inhabitants of the garrets sniffed and
thought of turpentine. Pesach swallowed the concoction, murmuring "To
life" afresh. His throat felt like the funnel of a steamer, and there
were tears in his eyes when he put down the glass.

"Ah, that was good," he murmured.

"Not like thy English drinks, eh?" said Mr. Belcovitch.

"England!" snorted Pesach in royal disdain. "What a country! Daddle-doo
is a language and ginger-beer a liquor."

"Daddle doo" was Pesach's way of saying "That'll do." It was one of the
first English idioms he picked up, and its puerility made him facetious.
It seemed to smack of the nursery; when a nation expressed its soul
thus, the existence of a beverage like ginger-beer could occasion no
further surprise.

"You shan't have anything stronger than ginger-beer when we're married,"
said Fanny laughingly. "I am not going to have any drinking.'"

"But I'll get drunk on ginger-beer," Pesach laughed back.

"You can't," Fanny said, shaking her large fond smile to and fro. "By my
health, not."

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Can't even get _shikkur_ on it. What a liquor!"

In the first Anglo-Jewish circles with which Pesach had scraped
acquaintance, ginger-beer was the prevalent drink; and, generalizing