Stories and Pictures Part 12

I made no reply.

"Well," exclaimed Rivkah, "why so sad? There's no saying but you, too.... Cheer up!" she went on, "if G.o.d will, one can fire off a broom.

Besides, how long do you suppose it will last? No one can live forever.

My word, what a young widow you will make, to be sure. Won't you be run after!"

Rivkah wished Reb Zeinwill no harm.

"To be sure, he's a wretch; he tormented that other woman; but she was sickly, and you are sound as a nut. He will treat _you_ well enough."

He came back!

My father was better, but he fancied a little dry-cupping--he was afraid, otherwise, of going out. He felt that after lying down so long, and then sitting for so many weeks on end, the blood had all settled in one place, and should be stirred. Also his shoulders ached, and dry-cupping is the sovereign remedy for that.

I shook as with ague. When there was dry-cupping to be done, the "boy"

came, not the Rofeh himself.

"Will you go and fetch the Rofeh?" asked my father.

"The idea!" exclaimed my mother. "A Kallah-Madel!"

She went herself.

"Why have you grown so pale?" asked my father, in alarm.

"Nothing."

"It's some days now," he persisted.

"You imagine it, Tate."[15]

"Your mother says the same."

"_Eh!_"

"To-day"--father wanted to cheer me up--"they are coming to measure you for the wedding dress."

I was silent.

"Aren't you pleased?" he asked.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"You don't even know _what_ they are making you!"

"But they've measured me once already."

Hereupon my mother came in with the Rofeh himself.

I felt relieved, and yet all the time something mourned within me: "Perhaps you will never see him again."

"What a world it is!" Thus the Rofeh coming in panting and groaning.

"Reb Zeinwill marries a young girl, and the treasurer's Leezerl has turned ascetic and run away from his wife."

"Leezerl!" cried mother, in astonishment.

"As I tell you; and here am I at sixty about early and late, and my a.s.sistant goes to bed."

I began to tremble again.

"Don't keep such a Gentile!" said my mother.

"A Gentile?" said the Rofeh. "Why a Gentile?"

"What's all that to me?" interrupted father, impatiently. "You'd better set to work."

Father was naturally good-tempered; he always seemed to me incapable of hurting a fly, and yet his tone was so full of contempt for the Rofeh.

When he lay sick in bed, he was always glad if anyone came in to have a chat with him, but he could never get on with the Rofeh; he always interrupted him and told him to see to his own business, but this was the first time he had spoken so strongly. It pained me, because how much rougher would he not have been with the other, who was lying ill?

What is wrong with him?

He had said his heart was weak.

What that meant exactly, I did not know; it must be something for which one had to go to bed, and yet _my_ heart told me that I had something to answer for in the matter.

That night I cried in my sleep; my mother woke me, and sat down beside me on my bed.

"Hush, my child," she said, "don't let us wake father." And our conversation was whispered into each other's ears.

I noticed that mother was greatly disturbed; she looked at me inquiringly, as though determined to get at the truth, and I resolved to say nothing, at all events so long as my father slept.

"My child, why have you been crying?"

"I don't know, mother."

"Do you feel well?"

"Yes, Mamishe; only sometimes my head aches."

She sat on my bed, leaning half way over, and I drew nearer her and laid my head on her breast.

"Mother," I asked, "why does your heart beat so loud?"

"For fear, Tochter'she."

"Are _you_ afraid at night, too?"