Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/394

 390 KAISIN

And Chayyim's eyes are ready to start out of his head. A charitable loan where is one to get a chari- table loan? If only five and twenty rubles!

He asks it of everyone, but they only answer with a merry laugh : '

"Are you mad ? Money just before a fair ?"

And it seems to Chayyim that he really will go mad.

"Suppose you went across to Loibe-Bares?" suggests his wife, who takes her full share in his distress.

"I had thought of that myself/' answers Chayyim, meditatively.

"But what?" asks the wife.

Chayyim is about to reply, "But I can't go there, I haven't the courage," only that it doesn's suit him to be so frank with his wife, and he answers :

"Devil take him ! He won't lend anything !"

"Try ! It won't hurt," she persists.

And Chayyim reflects that he has no other resource, that Loibe-Bares is a rich man, and living in the same street, a neighbor in fact, and that he requires no money for the fair, being a dealer in lumber and timber.

"Give me out my Sabbath overcoat!" says Chayyim to his wife, in a resolute tone.

"Didn't I say so?" the wife answers. "It's the best thing you can do, to go to him."

Chayyim placed himself before a half-broken looking- glass which was nailed to the wall, smoothed his beard with both hands, tightened his earlocks, and then took off his hat, and gave it a polish with his sleeve.

"Just look and see if I haven't got any white on my coat off the wall !"