"Plague take a woman's tongue!" she mutters then, exclaiming against herself:
"The small barrel! Whatever for? To please the driver? Driver be blessed! Can't he give his horses a few more oats for once?"
Grumbling thus over the stupidity of a woman's tongue, she has just managed to doze off. From beneath the counterpane appears a red kerchief that falls dangling round about her face and her pointed red and blue nose.
She breathes heavily, and presses one bony hand to her old heart. Who knows what she is dreaming? Perhaps that the driver has broken his word, and she is left for a whole year without Parnosseh.
The opposite corner belongs to Yoneh the water-carrier.
The wife and two children sleep in one bed, and Yoneh with the elder Cheder boy in another.
Now and then a sigh issues from the beds. Here also people have lain down in sorrow.
The little Cheder boy has been crying for money to pay the rabbi his fee.
And the eldest daughter was left without a situation. She had been doing well, as servant to a couple without children. Suddenly her mistress died. So she came home—she could not stay on alone with the widower.
There were a few rubles owing to her in wages—they would have been just enough to pay the rabbi—but the widower says it is no concern of his, his wife never mentioned it, and he doesn't know—he never mixes himself up with the affairs of women.