FL U J ' TER-D UC 'K. 375
unclean animal, not to be handled, for he would not touch puss himself, though her pious title of " Rebbitzin," or Rabbi's wife, was the invention of this master of nicknames. But for such flashes no one would have suspected the stern little man of humour. But he had it — dry. He called the cat " Rebbitzin " ever since the day she refused to drink milk after meat. Perhaps she was gorged with the meat. But he insisted that the cat had caught religion through living in a Jewish family, and he developed a theory that she would not eat meat till it was kosher, so that in its earlier stages it might be exposed without risk of feline larceny.
Cats are soothing to infants, but they ceased to satisfy Rachel when she grew up. Her education, while it gratified Her Majesty's Inspectors, was not calculated to eradicate the domestic rebel in her. At school she learnt of the existence of two Hebrew words, called Moudeh am, but it was not till some time after that it flashed upon her that they were closely related to Mediant, and the discovery did not improve her opinion of her mother. She was a bonny child, who promised to be a beautiful girl, and her teachers petted her. They dressed well, these teachers, and Rachel ceased to consider Flutter-Duck's Sabbath shawl the stand- ard of taste and splendour. Ere she was in her teens she grumbled at her home surroundings, and even fell foul of the all-pervading fur, thereby quarrelling with her bread and butter in more senses than one. She would open the win- dow — strangely fastidious — to eat her bread and butter off the broad ledge outside the room, but often the fur only came flying the faster to the spot, as if in search of air ; and in the winter her pretentious queasiness set everybody re- monstrating and shivering in the sudden draught.
Her objection to fur did not, however, embrace the prep-
