nd of his teeth, and by his eyes, which nearly started from his
head. Meyerl had never seen him look like that before, but soon his
father was once more pacing the deck, his head down, his wet collar
turned up, his hands in his sleeves, and his back slightly bent.

When they arrived in New York City, Meyerl began to feel giddy, and it
was not long before the whole of Tartilov appeared to him like a dream.

It was in the beginning of winter, and soon the snow fell, the fresh
white snow, and it was something like! Meyerl was now a "boy," he went
to "school," made snowballs, slid on the slides, built little fires in
the middle of the street, and nobody interfered. He went home to eat
and sleep, and spent what you may call his "life" in the street.

In their room were cold, piercing draughts, which made it feel dreary
and dismal. Meyerl's father, a lean, large-boned man, with a dark, brown
face and black beard, had always been silent, and it was but seldom he
said so much as "Are you there, Tzippe? Do you hear me, Tzippe?" But now
his silence was frightening! The mother, on the other hand, used to be
full of life and spirits, skipping about the place, and it was
"Shloimeh!" here, and "Shloimeh!" there, and her tongue wagging merrily!
And suddenly there was an end of it all. The father only walked back and
forth over the room, and she turned to look after him like a child in
disgrace, and looked and looked as though forever wanting to say
something, and never daring to say it. There was something new in her
look, something dog-like! Yes, on my word, something like what there was
in the eyes of Mishke the dog with which Meyerl used to like playing
"over there," in that little town in dreamland. Sometimes Meyerl, waking
suddenly in the night, heard, or imagined he heard, his mother sobbing,
while his father lay in the other bed puffing at his cigar, but so hard,
it was frightening, because it made a little fire every time in the
dark, as though of itself, in the air, just over the place where his
father's black head must be lying. Then Meyerl's eyes would shut of
themselves, his brain was confused, and his mother and the glowing
sparks and the whole room sank away from him, and Meyerl dropped off to
sleep.

Twice that winter his mother fell ill. The first time it lasted two
days, the second, four, and both times the illness was dangerous. Her
face glowed like an oven, her lower lip bled beneath her sharp white
teeth, and ye