Doyle meets a girl.

(With mild corrections and loving touches applied by the editor.)

June 14, 1902

I have, for two weeks, been working for Rebbe Weinstock and his Mrs., a big windstorm of a woman who never has fewer than six or nine pots boiling on their stove and four or seven dishes cooking in the oven. Where all the food disappears to, I couldn't tell you. I haven't had a bite. Their food being Jewish and unsavory to my Goy mouth.

Rebbe Weinstock and his Mrs. haven't any children, though they are, I would guess, the age of Father and Mother. I suppose something is wrong in their plumbing that has rendered them barren. Because when their brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and cousin and uncles and aunts are over, they love children just like any other people, the Jews do, giving them nickels and oranges and apples and little fig bars and hard candies as treats. It is a lively time when the Rebbe and Mrs' apartment is full, the place brimming with laughter and chatter just like a good home of a normal, non Jew.

One of Rebbe's nieces is a pretty young thing, about my age, for a Jewess. Malka looks black Irish to me with deep eyes and long dark hair. Today I was alone with her in the kitchen.

"What is your name?" She asked me.

"Ned," I said taking off my cap. "Ned Doyle. I come from County Bhaile Atha Cilath just three months ago and live on Mulberry Street."

"I just asked your name," she said abruptly.

"We Irish have the Gift of Gab," I told her and she laughed.

"Better," she said, leaving the room, "to have the Gift of Quiet."

That said, Diary, I like this Malka, and truth be told, I think she likes me too. For later on she stopped me again as I was shoveling coal in the coal cellar and she brought me a cup of hot tea sweet with honey as the Rebbe and the Mrs. drink it that way, as is their manner.

I will not tell Father and Mother about Malka. Me with a Jewess, they would say, and Father would swat me across the arrrrse with a rolled up newspaper. And mother would cry and say, 'tis time it 'tis to sail back to Dublin, away from Pharisees and Jews with their habits and their loose women.

That is all, Diary, today.

More I will soon write.