sea foamed at their feel, and wrinkled good-humored old men played nap
on tea-trays. Some of the doors were blocked below with sliding barriers
of wood, a sure token of infants inside given to straying. More obvious
tokens of child-life were the swings nailed to the lintels of a few
doors, in which, despite the cold, toothless babes swayed like monkeys
on a branch. But the Square, with its broad area of quadrangular
pavement, was an ideal playing-ground for children, since other animals
came not within its precincts, except an inquisitive dog or a local cat.
Solomon Ansell knew no greater privilege than to accompany his father to
these fashionable quarters and whip his humming-top across the ample
spaces, the while Moses transacted his business with Malka. Last time
the business was psalm-saying. Milly had been brought to bed of a son,
but it was doubtful if she would survive, despite the charms hung upon
the bedpost to counteract the nefarious designs of Lilith, the wicked
first wife of Adam, and of the Not-Good Ones who hover about women in
childbirth. So Moses was sent for, post-haste, to intercede with the
Almighty. His piety, it was felt, would command attention. For an
average of three hundred and sixty-two days a year Moses was a miserable
worm, a nonentity, but on the other three, when death threatened to
visit Malka or her little clan, Moses became a personage of prime
importance, and was summoned at all hours of the day and night to
wrestle with the angel Azrael. When the angel had retired, worsted,
after a match sometimes protracted into days, Moses relapsed into his
primitive insignificance, and was dismissed with a mouthful of rum and a
shilling. It never seemed to him an unfair equivalent, for nobody could
make less demand on the universe than Moses. Give him two solid meals
and three solid services a day, and he was satisfied, and he craved more
for spiritual snacks between meals than for physical.

The last crisis had been brief, and there was so little danger that,