Yet Moses never complained nor lost faith.

To be spat upon was the very condition of existence of the modern Jew, deprived of Palestine and his Temple, a footsore mendicant, buffeted and reviled, yet the dearer to the Lord God who had chosen him from the nations.

Bullies might break Moses's head in this world, but in the next he would sit on a gold chair in Paradise among the saints and sing exegetical acrostics to all eternity.

It was some dim perception of these things that made Esther forgive her father when the Ansells waited weeks and weeks for a postal order and landlords were threatening to bundle them out neck and crop, and her mother's hands were worn to the bone slaving for her little ones.
Things improved a little just before the mother died, for they had settled down in London and Moses earned eighteen shillings a week as a machinist and presser, and no longer roamed the country.

But the interval of happiness was brief.