skets, dragged herself up the
steps, and opened the door.

"Mame, it's Ma-a-me!" came voices from within.

The house was full of smoke, the children clustered round her in the
middle of the room, and never ceased calling out Mame! One child's voice
was tearful: "Where have you been all day?" another's more cheerful:
"How nice it is to have you back!" and all the voices mingled together
into one.

"Be quiet! You don't give me time to draw my breath!" cried the mother,
laying down the baskets.

She went to the fireplace, looked about for something, and presently the
house was illumined by a smoky lamp.

The feeble shimmer lighted only the part round the hearth, where Taube
was kindling two pieces of stick--an old dusty sewing-machine beside a
bed, sign of a departed tailor, and a single bed opposite the lamp,
strewn with straw, on which lay various fruits, the odor of which filled
the room. The rest of the apartment with the remaining beds lay in
shadow.

It is a year and a half since her husband, Lezer the tailor, died. While
he was still alive, but when his cough had increased, and he could no
longer provide for his family, Taube had started earning something on
her own account, and the worse the cough, the harder she had to toil, so
that by the time she became a widow, she was already used to supporting
her whole family.

The eldest boy, Yitzchokel, had been the one consolation of Lezer the
tailor's cheerless existence, and Lezer was comforted on his death-bed
to think he should leave a good Kaddish behind him.

When he died, the householders had pity on the desolate widow, collected
a few rubles, so that she might buy something to traffic with, and,
seeing that Yitzchokel was a promising boy, they placed him in the
house-of-study, arranged for him to have his daily meals in the houses
of the rich, and bade him pass his time over the Talmud.

Taube, when she saw her Yitzchokel taking his meals with the rich, felt
satisfied. A weakly boy, what could _she_ give him to eat? There, at the
rich man's table, he had the best of everything, but it grieved her that
he should eat in strange, rich houses--she herself did not know whether
she had received a kindness or the reverse, when he was taken off her
hands.

One day, sitting at her stall, she spied her Yitzchokel emerge from the
Shool-Gass with his Tefillin-bag under his arm, and go straight into the
house of Reb Zindel the rich, to breakfast, and a pang went t