All her thoughts were now taken up with getting ready to attend the wedding; the time was so short—there were only three weeks left. When her other children were married, Gittel began her preparations three months ahead, and now there were only three weeks.
Next day she took out her watered silk dress, with the green satin flowers, and hung it up to air, examined it, lest there should be a hook missing. After that she polished her long ear-rings with chalk, her pearls, her rings, and all her other ornaments, and bought a new yellow silk kerchief for her head, with a large flowery pattern in a lighter shade.
A week before the journey to Warsaw they baked spice-cakes, pancakes, and almond-rolls to take with her, "from the bridegroom's side," and ordered a wig for the bride. When her eldest son was married, Gittel had also given the bride silver candlesticks for Friday evenings, and presented her with a wig for the Veiling Ceremony.
And before she left, Gittel went to her husband's grave, and asked him to be present at the wedding as a good advocate for the newly-married pair.
Gittel started for Warsaw in grand style, and cheerful and happy, as befits a mother going to the wedding of her favorite son. All those who accompanied her to the station declared that she looked younger and prettier by twenty years, and made a beautiful bridegroom's mother.
Besides wedding presents for the bride, Gittel took with her money for wedding expenses, so that she might play her part with becoming lavishness, and people should not think her Moishehle came, bless and preserve us, of a low-born family—to show that he was none so forlorn but he had, God be praised and may it be for a hundred and twenty years to come! a mother, and a sister, and brothers, and came of a well-to-do family. She would show them that she could be as fine a bridegroom's mother as anyone, even, thank God, in Warsaw. Moishehle was her last child, and she grudged him nothing. Were he (may he be a good intercessor!) alive, he would certainly have graced the wedding better, and spent more money, but she would spare nothing to make a good figure on the occasion. She would treat every connection of the bride to a special dance-tune, give the musicians a whole five-ruble-piece for their performance of the Vivat, and two dreierlech for the Kosher-Tanz, beside something for the Rav, the cantor, and the beadle, and alms for the poor—what should she save for? She has no more children to marry off—blessed be His dear Name, who had granted her life to see her Moishehle's wedding!
Thus happily did Gittel start for Warsaw.
One carriage after another drove up to the wedding-reception room in Dluga Street, Warsaw, ladies and their daughters, all in evening dress, and smartly attired gentlemen, alighted and went in.
The room was full, the band played, ladies and gentlemen were dancing, and those who were not, talked of the bride and bridegroom, and said how fortunate they considered Regina, to have secured such a presentable young man, lively, educated, and intelligent, with quite a fortune, which he had made himself, and a good business. Ten thousand rubles dowry with the perfection of a husband was a rare thing nowadays, when a poor professional man, a little doctor without practice, asked fifteen thousand. It was true, they said, that Regina was a pretty girl and a credit to her parents, but how many pretty, bright girls had more money than Regina, and sat waiting?
It was above all the mothers of the young ladies present who talked low in this way among themselves.