Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/125

 THE CLOCK 121

time and went on, with difficulty and distress, but still it went till one night there was a misfortune.

It was on a Friday evening in winter. We had just eaten our Sabbath supper, the delicious peppered fish with horseradish, the hot soup with macaroni, the stewed plums, and said grace as was meet. The Sabbath candles flickered, the maid was just handing round fresh, hot, well-dried Polish nuts from off the top of the stove, when in came Aunt Yente, a dark-favored little woman without teeth, whose husband had deserted her, to become a follower of the Eebbe, quite a number of years ago.

"Good Sabbath !" said Aunt Yente, "I knew you had some fresh Polish nuts. The pity is that I've nothing to crack them with, may my husband live no more years than I have teeth in my mouth ! What did you think, Malkeh, of the fish to-day? What a struggle there was over them at the market! I asked him about his fish Manasseh, the lazy when up comes Soreh Peril, the rich: Make haste, give it me, hand me over that little pike ! Why in such a hurry ? say I. God be with you, the river is not on fire, and Manasseh is not going to take the fish back there, either. Take my word for it, with these rich people money is cheap, and sense is dear. Turns round on me and says: Paupers, she says, have no business here a poor man, she says, shouldn't hanker after good things. What do you think of such a shrew ? How long did she stand by her mother in the market selling ribbons? She behaves just like Pessil Peise Avrohom's over her daughter, the one she married to a great man in Schtrischtch, who took her