d, 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.

Now he, too, has a little bit of pleasure, a taste of joy, for which God
be praised!

Everyone rejoices, Feigele most of all, her cheeks look rosier and
fresher, her eyes darker and brighter.

She sits at her machine and sews, and the whole room rings with her
voice:

"Un was ich hob' gewollt, hob' ich ausgefuehrt,
Soll ich azoi leben!
Ich hob' gewollt a shenem Choson,
Hot' mir Gott gegeben."

In the evening comes Eleazar.

"Well, what are you doing?"

"What should I be doing? Wait, I'll show you something."

"What sort of thing?"

She rises from her place, goes to the chest that stands in the stove
corner, takes something out of it, and hides it under her apron.

"Whatever have you got there?" he laughs.

"Why are you in such a hurry to know?" she asks, and sits down beside
him, brings from under her apron a picture in fine woolwork, Adam and
Eve, and shows it him, saying:

"There, now you see! It was worked by a girl I know--for me, for us. I
shall hang it up in our room, opposite the bed."

"Yours or mine?"

"You wait, Eleazar! You will see the house I shall arrange for you--a
paradise, I tell you, just a little paradise! Everything in it will have
to shine, so that it will be a pleasure to step inside."

"And every evening when work is done, we two shall sit together, side by
side, just as we are doing now," and he puts an arm around her.

"And you will tell me everything, all about everything," she says,
laying a hand on his shoulder, while with the other she takes hold of
his chin, and looks into his eyes.

They feel so happy, so light at heart.

Everything in the house has taken on an air of kindliness, there is a
soft, attractive gloss on every object in the room, on the walls and the
table, the familiar things make signs to her, and speak to her as friend
to friend.

The two are silent, lost in their own thoughts.

"Look," she says to him, and takes her bank-book out of the chest, "two
hundred and forty rubles already. I shall make it up to three hundred,
and then you won't have to say, 'I took you just as you were.'"

"Go along with you, you are very