t wild, terrifying groans betrayed what she was suffering,
and she was often violently sick, just as when they were on the sea.

At those times she looked at her husband with eyes in which there was no
prayer. Mishke once ran a thorn deep into his paw, and he squealed and
growled angrily, and sucked his paw, as though he were trying to swallow
it, thorn and all, and the look in his eyes was the look of Meyerl's
mother in her pain.

In those days his father, too, behaved differently, for, instead of
walking to and fro across the room, he ran, puffing incessantly at his
cigar, his brow like a thunder-cloud and occasional lightnings flashing
from his eyes. He never looked at his wife, and neither of them looked
at Meyerl, who then felt himself utterly wretched and forsaken.

And--it is very odd, but--it was just on these occasions that Meyerl
felt himself drawn to his home. In the street things were as usual, but
at home it was like being in Shool during the Solemn Days at the blowing
of the ram's horn, when so many tall "fathers" stand with prayer-scarfs
over their heads, and hold their breath, and when out of the distance
there comes, unfolding over the heads of the people, the long, loud
blast of the Shofar.

And both times, when his mother recovered, the shadow that lay on their
home had darkened, his father was gloomier than ever, and his mother,
when she looked at him, had a still more crushed and dog-like
expression, as though she were lying outside in the dust of the street.

The snowfalls became rarer, then they ceased altogether, and there came
into the air a feeling of something new--what exactly, it would have
been hard for Meyerl to say. Anyhow it was something good, very good,
for everyone in the street was glad of it, one could see that by their
faces, which were more lightsome and gay.

On the Eve of Passover the sky of home cleared a little too, street and
house joined hands through the windows, opened now for the first time
since winter set in, and this neighborly act of theirs cheered Meyerl's
heart.

His parents made preparations for Passover, and poor little preparations
they were: there was no Matzes-baking with its merry to-do; a packet of
cold, stale Matzes was brought into the house; there was no pail of
beet-root soup in the corner, covered with a coarse cloth of unbleached
linen; no dusty china service was fetched from the attic, where it had
lain many years between one Passover and anothe