of a young girl, but they feigned ignorance, thinking to themselves, "Let the children get to know each other better, there will be time enough to talk it over afterwards."
Evening: a small room, shadows moving on the walls, a new table on which burns a large, bright lamp, and sitting beside it Feigele sewing and Eleazar reading aloud a novel by Shomer.
Father and mother, tired out with a whole day's work, sleep on their beds behind the curtain, which shuts off half the room.
And so they sit, both of them, only sometimes Eleazar laughs aloud, takes her by the hand, and exclaims with a smile, "Feigele!"
"What do you want, silly?"
"Nothing at all, nothing at all."
And she sews on, thinking, "I have got you fast enough, but don't imagine you are taking somebody from the street, just as she is; there are still eighty rubles wanting to make three hundred in the bank."
And she shows him her wedding outfit, the shifts and the bedclothes, of which half lie waiting in the drawers.
They drew closer one to another, they became more and more intimate, so that all looked upon them as engaged, and expected the marriage contract to be drawn up any day. Feigele's mother was jubilant at her daughter's good fortune, at the prospect of such a son-in-law, such a golden son-in-law!
Reb Yainkel, her father, was an elderly man, a worn-out peddler, bent sideways with the bag of junk continually on his shoulder.
