The wish is cut short in his mouth, he has caught a glance of Sossye's through the door of the baking-room, he answers with two, gets three back, Sossye pursing her lips to signify a kiss. Shloimeh folds his hands, which also means something.
Meantime ten Matzes get scorched, and one of Sossye's is pulled in two. "Brennen brennt mir mein Harz," starts a worker singing in a plaintive key.
"Come! hush, hush!" scolds old Berke. "Songs, indeed! What next, you impudent boy?"
"My sorrows be on their head!" sighs a neighbor of Sossye's. "They'd soon be tired of their life, if they were me. I've left two children at home fit to scream their hearts out. The other is at the breast, I have brought it along. It is quiet just now, by good luck."
"What is the use of a poor woman's having children?" exclaims another, evidently "expecting" herself. Indeed, she has a child a year—and a seven-days' mourning a year afterwards.
"Do you suppose I ask for them? Do you think I cry my eyes out for them before God?"
"If she hasn't any, who's to inherit her place at the Matzes-baking—a hundred years hence?"
"All very well for you to talk, you're a grass-widow (to no Jewish daughter may it apply!)!"
"May such a blow be to my enemies as he'll surely come back again!"
"It's about time! After three years!"