"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 almost as hastily as if he were going to write a book on the country, he concluded that it was the national beverage. He had long since discovered his mistake, but the drift of the discussion reminded Becky of a chance for an arrow.
"On the day when you sit for joy, Pesach," she said slily. "I shall send you a valentine."
Pesach colored up and those in the secret laughed; the reference was to another of Pesach's early ideas. Some mischievous gossip had heard him arguing with another Greener outside a stationer's shop blazing with comic valentines. The two foreigners were extremely puzzled to understand what these monstrosities portended; Pesach, however, laid it down that the microcephalous gentlemen with tremendous legs, and the ladies five-sixths head and one-sixth skirt, were representations of the English peasants who lived in the little villages up country.
"When I sit for joy," retorted Pesach, "it will not be the season for valentines."
"Won't it though!" cried Becky, shaking her frizzly black curls. "You'll be a pair of comic 'uns."
"All right, Becky," said Alte good-humoredly. "Your turn'll come, and then we shall have the laugh of you."
"Never," said Becky. "What do I want with a man?"
The arm of the specially invited young man was round her as she spoke.
"It's not affectation. I mean it. What's the good of the men who visit father? There isn't a gentleman among them."
"Ah, wait till I win on the lottery," said the special young man.
"Then, vy not take another eighth of a ticket?" inquired Sugarman the _Shadchan_, who seemed to spring from the other end of the room. He was one of the greatest Talmudists in London--a lean, hungry-looking man, sharp of feature and acute of intellect. "Look at Mrs. Robinson--I've just won her over twenty pounds, and she only gave me two pounds for myself. I call it a _cherpah_--a shame."
"Yes, but you stole another two pounds," said Becky.