'Is he open again?' gasped the _Parnass_, hurled from his judicial calm.
'Is my eye open?' witheringly retorted Barzinsky. 'A fat lot of good your preacher does.'
'It was you who would elect him instead of Rochinsky,' the _Parnass_ reminded him. Barzinsky was taken aback.
'Well, we don't want foreigners, do we?' he murmured.
'And you caught an Englishman in Simeon Samuels,' chuckled the _Parnass_, in whose breast the defeat of his candidate had never ceased to rankle.
'Not he. An Englishman plays fair,' retorted Barzinsky. He seriously considered himself a Briton, regarding his naturalization papers as retrospective. 'We are just passing the Reverend Gabriel's house,' he went on. 'Let us wait a moment; he'll come along, and we'll give him a piece of our minds.'
'I can't keep my family waiting for _Kiddush'_ (home service), said Peleg.
'Come home, father; I'm hungry,' put in Peleg junior, who with various Barzinsky boys had been trailing in the parental wake.
'Silence, impudent face!' snapped Barzinsky. 'If I was your father----Ah, here comes the minister. Good _Shabbos_ (Sabbath), Mr. Gabriel. I congratulate you on the effect of your last sermon.'
An exultant light leapt into the minister's eye. 'Is he shut?'
'Is your mouth shut?' Solomon replied scathingly. 'I doubt if he'll even come to _Shool_ (synagogue) to-morrow.'
The ministerial mouth remained open in a fishy gasp, but no words came from it.
'I'm afraid you'll have to use stronger language, Mr. Gabriel,' said the _Parnass_ soothingly.
'Oh, don't listen to Barzinsky. He'll be there right enough. Just give it to him hot!'
'Your sermon was too general,' added Peleg, who had lingered, though his son had not. 'You might have meant any of us.'
'But we must not shame our brother in public,' urged the minister. 'It is written in the Talmud that he who does so has no share in the world to come.'
'Well, you shamed us all,' retorted Barzinsky. 'A stranger would imagine we were a congregation of Sabbath-breakers.'
'But there wasn't any stranger,' said the minister.
'There was Simeon Samuels,' the _Parnass_ reminded him. 'Perhaps your sermon against Sabbath-breaking made him fancy he was just one of a crowd, and that you have therefore only hardened him----'