There was a girl as big as I, who never called me names, and gave me flowers from her father's garden.

And there were the Parphens, of whom my grandfather rented his store.

They treated us as if we were not Jews at all.

On our festival days they visited our house and brought us presents, carefully choosing such things as Jewish children might accept; and they liked to have everything explained to them, about the wine and the fruit and the candles, and they even tried to say the appropriate greetings and blessings in Hebrew.

My father used to say that if all the Russians were like the Parphens, there would be no trouble between Gentiles and Jews; and Fedora Pavlovna, the landlady, would reply that the Russian _people_ were not to blame.