THE TWO BROTHERS
It is three months since Yainkele and Berele—two brothers, the first fourteen years old, the second sixteen— have been at the college that stands in the town of X—, five German miles from their birthplace Dalissovke, after which they are called the "Dalissovkers."
Yainkele is a slight, pale boy, with black eyes that peep slyly from beneath the two black eyebrows. Berele is taller and stouter than Yainkele, his eyes are lighter, and his glance is more defiant, as though he would say, "Let me alone, I shall laugh at you all yet!"
The two brothers lodged with a poor relation, a widow, a dealer in second-hand goods, who never came home till late at night. 'The two brothers had no bed, but a chest, which was broad enough, served instead, and the brothers slept sweetly on it, covered with their own torn clothes; and in their dreams they saw their native place, the little street, their home, their father with his long beard and dim eyes and bent back, and their mother with her long, pale, melancholy face, and they heard the little brothers and sisters quarrelling, as they fought over a bit of herring, and they dreamt other dreams of home, and early in the morning they were homesick, and then they used to run to the Dalissovke Inn, and ask the carrier if there were a letter for them from home.
The Dalissovke carriers were good Jews with soft hearts, and they were sorry for the two poor boys, who
