Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/426

 422 RAISIN

their father's conclusion quite crushed them, and they had no longer even the courage to pray.

Only the littlest, the four-year-old, in the torn frock, prayed softly:

"Oi, please God, there will be a little brother."

"I shall die without a Kaddish !" groaned Reb Selig.

The time drags on, the moans behind the curtain grow louder, and Reb Selig and the elder girls feel that soon, very soon, the "grandmother'' will call out in despair, "A little girl!" And Reb Selig feels that the words will strike home to his heart like a blow, and he resolves to run away.

He goes out into the yard, and looks up at the sky. It is midnight. The moon swims along so quietly and indifferently, the stars seem to frolic and rock them- selves like little children, and still Reb Selig hears, in the "grandmother's" husky voice, "A girl I"

"Well, there will be no Kaddish ! Verfallen !" he says, crossing the yard again. "There's no getting it by force!"

But his trying to calm himself is useless; the fear that it should be a girl only grows upon him. He loses patience, and goes back into the house.

But the house is in a turmoil.

"What is it, eh ?"

"A little boy ! Tate, a boy ! Tatinke, as surely may I be well !" with this news the seven girls fall upon him with radiant faces.

"Eh, a little boy ?" asked Reb Selig, as though bewil- dered, "eh? what?"