In such a state of things an agent scarcely needed to be astute.
"Pieces" were to be had for the picking up. The only trouble was that
they were not gold pieces. The idle weavers could not defray the
passage-money, still less the agent's commission for smuggling them
through.
"If I only had a few hundred roubles," Srul lamented to Leah, "I could
get to a land where there is work without breaking the Sabbath, a land
to which Biela could follow me when I waxed in substance."
Leah supported her household of three--for there was a younger sister,
Tsirrele, who, being only nine, did not count except at meal-times--on
the price of her piece-work at the Christian umbrella factory, where,
by a considerate Russian law, she could work on Sunday, though the
Christians might not. Thus she earned, by literal sweating in a torrid
atmosphere, three roubles, all except a varying number of kopecks,
every week. And when you live largely on black bread and coffee, you
may, in the course of years, save a good deal, even if you have three
mouths. Therefore, Leah had the sum that Srul mentioned so wistfully,
put by for a rainy day (when there should be no umbrellas to make).
And as the sum had kept increasing, the notion that it might form the
nucleus of an establishment for Biela and Srul had grown clearer and
clearer in her mind, which it tickled delightfully. But the idea that
now came to her of staking all on a possible future was agitating.
"We might, perhaps, be able to get together the money," she said
tentatively. "But--" She shook her head, and the Russian proverb came
to her lips. "Before the sun rises the dew may destroy you."
Srul plunged into an eager recapitulation of the agent's assurances.
And before the eyes of both the marriage-canopy reared itself splendid
in the Land of Promise, and the figure of Biela flitted, crowned with
the bridal wreath.
"But what will become of your mother?" Leah asked.
Srul's soap-bubbles collapsed. He had forgotten for the moment that he
had a mother.
"She might come to live with us," Leah hastened to suggest, seeing his
o'erclouded face.
"Ah, no, that would be too much of a burden. And Tsirrele, too, is
growing up."
"Tsirrele eats quite as much now as she will in ten years' time," said
Leah, laughing, as she thought fondly of her dear, beautiful little
one, her gay whimsies and odd caprices.
"And my mother does not eat very much," said Srul, wavering.
In this way Srul became a "piece," and was dumped down in the Land of
Promise.