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 A GLOOMY WEDDING 103

"What can have caused it ? Lie down ! How do you feel now ? Perhaps you would like a sip of lemonade ?" they all asked.

"Thank you, I want nothing, I feel better already, leave me alone for a while. I shall soon recover myself, and be all right."

So Gittel was left alone, and she breathed more easily, her head stopped aching, she felt like one let out of prison, only there was a pain at her heart. The tears which had choked her all day now began to flow, and she wept abundantly. The music never ceased playing, she heard the sound of the dancers' feet and the directions of the master of ceremonies; the floor shook, Gittel wept, and tried with all her might to keep from sobbing, so that people should not hear and come in and disturb her. She had not wept so since the death of her husband, and this was the wedding of her favorite son !

By degrees she ceased to weep altogether, dried her eyes, and sat quietly talking to herself of the many things that passed through her head.

"Better that he (may he enter a lightsome paradise!) should have died than lived to see what I have seen, and the dear delight which I have had, at the wedding of my youngest child ! Better that I myself should not have lived to see his marriage canppy. Canopy, indeed ! Four sticks stuck up in the middle of the room to make fun with, for people to play at being married, like monkeys! Then at table: no Seven Blessings, not a Jewish word, not a Jewish face, no Minyan to be seen, only shaven Gentiles upon Gentiles, a roomful of naked women and girls that make you sick to look at them.