Page:Etta Block - One-act plays from the Yiddish (1923).pdf/19

 How strangely you talk today, Gruna!

I’m not talking. My sorrows talk. She was the prettiest girl in the town…

Today, too, no Evil Eye!

Today she’s a soured lemon—a grey-head! But at that time she shone like the sun and I was the pious scribe’s widow! I guarded her as one guards the one eye in his head. I knew that nowadays there were all sorts of strolling musicians about, tailor boys, Germans, old bachelors and such like. Even religious students would hang about the window. But what is a mother for? A marriageable girl, I knew, must be kept like a mirror—spotless, and I guarded mine! A breath didn’t touch her! And I guarded her—watched—not an eye did I take off her! She didn’t make a step out of the house without me, and always I preached: “Don’t look here, don’t look there; don’t stand there, don’t mix here. Don’t dare to even raise your eyes to the flying birds.”

Very good, as it should be.

(Miriam and Saril, unnoticed by Gruna and Dvorah, come in, but seeing Dvorah still there, they withdraw quietly again behind the curtain.)

&ensp;(bitterly) Good as the world! But how does she look to-