dowry. Lord of the World, I am not worthy of the mercy Thou hast shown me!" repeated Gittel over and over, as she paced the room with uplifted hands, while her daughter Beile took up the letter in her turn. The children and everyone in the house, including the maid from the kitchen, with rolled-up sleeves and wet hands, encircled Beile as she read aloud.
"Read louder, Beiletshke, so that I can hear, so that we can all hear," begged Gittel, and there were tears of happiness in her eyes.
The children Jumped for joy to see Grandmother so happy. The word "wedding," which Beile read out of the letter, contained a promise of all delightful things: musicians, pancakes, new frocks and suits, and they could not keep themselves from dancing. The maid, too, was heartily pleased, she kept on singing out, "Oi, what a bride, beautiful as gold!" and did not know what to be doing next—should she go and finish cooking the dinner, or should she pull down her sleeves and make holiday?
The hiss of a pot boiling over in the kitchen interrupted the letter-reading, and she was requested to go and attend to it forthwith,
"The bride sends us a separate greeting, long life to her, may she live when my bones are dust. Let us go to the provisor, he shall read it; it is written in French."
The provisor, the apothecary's foreman, who lived in the same house, said the bride's letter was not written in French, but in Polish, that she called Gittel her second mother, that she loved her son Moses as her life, that he was her world, that she held herself to be the most fortunate of girls, since God had given her Moses,
