r; his father brought in
a dinner service from the street, one he had bought cheap, and of which
the pieces did not match. But the exhilaration of the festival made
itself felt for all that, and warmed their hearts. At home, in Tartilov,
it had happened once or twice that Meyerl had lain in his little bed
with open eyes, staring stock-still, with terror, into the silent
blackness of the night, and feeling as if he were the only living soul
in the whole world, that is, the whole house; and the sudden crow of a
cock would be enough on these occasions to send a warm current of relief
and security through his heart.

His father's face looked a little more cheerful. In the daytime, while
he dusted the cups, his eyes had something pensive in them, but his lips
were set so that you thought: There, now, now they are going to smile!
The mother danced the Matzeh pancakes up and down in the kitchen, so
that they chattered and gurgled in the frying-pan. When a neighbor came
in to borrow a cooking pot, Meyerl happened to be standing beside his
mother. The neighbor got her pot, the women exchanged a few words about
the coming holiday, and then the neighbor said, "So we shall soon be
having a rejoicing at your house?" and with a wink and a smile she
pointed at his mother with her finger, whereupon Meyerl remarked for the
first time that her figure had grown round and full. But he had no time
just then to think it over, for there came a sound of broken china from
the next room, his mother stood like one knocked on the head, and his
father appeared in the door, and said:

"Go!"

His voice sent a quiver through the window-panes, as if a heavy wagon
were just crossing the bridge outside at a trot, the startled neighbor
turned, and whisked out of the house.

Meyerl's parents looked ill at ease in their holiday garb, with the
faces of mourners. The whole ceremony of the Passover home service was
spoilt by an atmosphere of the last meal on the Eve of the Fast of the
Destruction of the Temple. And when Meyerl, with the indifferent voice
of one hired for the occasion, sang out the "Why is this night
different?" his heart shrank together; there was the same hush round
about him as there is in Shool when an orphan recites the first
"Sanctification" for his dead parents.

His mother's lips moved, but gave forth no sound; from time to time she
wetted a finger with her tongue, and turned over leaf after leaf in her
service-book, and from time