Page:Etta Block - One-act plays from the Yiddish (1923).pdf/155

 DAVID I know. I know. I dread to think where it will end. More and more he gets the cheaper work to do. More and more his work gets poorer and poorer, until he has come to be a regular botch. It couldn’t be worse.

CHANNAH God won’t forsake us.

DAVID Of course He won’t. If He should—then it would indeed be bad!

CHANNAH Perhaps I will be able to get something to do to help out. I'll scrape together a few rubles and buy a sewing-machine. Then I could get the work direct from the customers instead of the dressmaker. In that way I could earn more.

DAVID That is easy to say. You and Reb Gerson to- gether hardly earn enough to buy bread for the family. What does your father make?— Altogether five rubles a week.

CHANNAH Maybe a little later he’ll earn more.

DAVID More and more he earns less and less, and as time goes on he works slower. Where another makes two thousand pieces a day, he barely makes twelve hundred. I, myself, make two thousand three hundred.

CHANNAH Two thousand three hundred!