r
years!"

"To my years?! A ruin to _yours_! _My_ children, are they? Are they not
yours, too? Couldn't you stay at home sometimes to care for them and
help me to bring them up, instead of trapesing round--the black year
knows where and with whom?"

"Rochel, Rochel, what has possessed you to start a quarrel with me now?
The bridegroom's family will be arriving directly."

"And what do you expect me to do, Moishehle, eh?! For God's sake! Go in
to her, we shall be made a laughing-stock."

The man rose from the table, and went into the next room to his
daughter. The mother followed.

On the little sofa that stood by the window sat a girl about eighteen,
her face hidden in her hands, her arms covered by her loose, thick,
black hair. She was evidently crying, for her bosom rose and fell like a
stormy sea. On the bed opposite lay the white silk wedding-dress, the
Chuppeh-Kleid, with the black, silk Shool-Kleid, and the black stuff
morning-dress, which the tailor who had undertaken the outfit had
brought not long ago. By the door stood a woman with a black scarf round
her head and holding boxes with wigs.

"Channehle! You are never going to do me this dishonor? to make me the
talk of the town?" exclaimed the father. The bride was silent.

"Look at me, daughter of Moisheh Groiss! It's all very well for Genendel
Freindel's daughter to wear a wig, but not for the daughter of Moisheh
Groiss? Is that it?"

"And yet Genendel Freindel might very well think more of herself than
you: she is more educated than you are, and has a larger dowry," put in
the mother.

The bride made no reply.

"Daughter, think how much blood and treasure it has cost to help us to a
bit of pleasure, and now you want to spoil it for us? Remember, for
God's sake, what you are doing with yourself! We shall be
excommunicated, the young man will run away home on foot!"

"Don't be foolish," said the mother, took a wig out of a box from the
woman by the door, and approached her daughter. "Let us try on the wig,
the hair is just the color of yours," and she laid the strange hair on
the girl's head.

The girl felt the weight, put up her fingers to her head, met among her
own soft, cool, living locks, the strange, dead hair of the wig, stiff
and cold, and it flashed through her, Who knows where the head to which
this hair belonged is now? A shuddering enveloped her, and as though
she had come in contact with something unclean, she snatched off the
wig,