Although Rochtzi has not seen more than thirty summers, she looks like
an old woman. Once upon a time she was pretty, she was even known as one
of the prettiest of the Kamenivke girls, and traces of her beauty are
still to be found in her uncommonly large, dark eyes, and even in her
lined face, although the eyes have long lost their fire, and her cheeks,
their color and freshness. She is dressed in clean holiday attire, but
her eyes are red from the hot, salt tears, and her expression is
darkened and sad.
"Such a festival, such a great, holy festival, and then when it
comes...." The pale lips tremble and quiver.
How many days and nights, beginning before Purim, has she sat with her
needle between her fingers, so that the children should have their
holiday frocks--and all depending on her hands and head! How much
thought and care and strength has she spent on preparing the room, their
poor little possessions, and the food? How many were the days, Sabbaths
excepted, on which they went without a spoonful of anything hot, so that
they might be able to give a becoming reception to that dear, great, and
holy visitor, the Passover? Everything (the Almighty forbid that she
should sin with her tongue!) of the best, ready and waiting, and then,
after all....
He, his sheepskin, his fur cap, and his great boots are soaked with rain
and steeped in thick mud, and there, in this condition, lies he, Bertzi
Wasserfuehrer, her husband, her Passover "king," like a great black lump,
on the nice, clean, white, draped "eating-couch," and snores.