Chapter III

In such a state of things an agent scarcely needed to be astute. "Pieces" were to be had for the picking up. The only trouble was that they were not gold pieces. The idle weavers could not defray the passage-money, still less the agent's commission for smuggling them through.

"If I only had a few hundred roubles," Srul lamented to Leah, "I could get to a land where there is work without breaking the Sabbath, a land to which Biela could follow me when I waxed in substance."

Leah supported her household of three--for there was a younger sister, Tsirrele, who, being only nine, did not count except at meal-times--on the price of her piece-work at the Christian umbrella factory, where, by a considerate Russian law, she could work on Sunday, though the Christians might not. Thus she earned, by literal sweating in a torrid atmosphere, three roubles, all except a varying number of kopecks, every week. And when you live largely on black bread and coffee, you may, in the course of years, save a good deal, even if you have three mouths. Therefore, Leah had the sum that Srul mentioned so wistfully, put by for a rainy day (when there should be no umbrellas to make). And as the sum had kept increasing, the notion that it might form the nucleus of an establishment for Biela and Srul had grown clearer and clearer in her mind, which it tickled delightfully. But the idea that now came to her of staking all on a possible future was agitating.

"We might, perhaps, be able to get together the money," she said tentatively. "But--" She shook her head, and the Russian proverb came to her lips. "Before the sun rises the dew may destroy you."

Srul plunged into an eager recapitulation of the agent's assurances. And before the eyes of both the marriage-canopy reared itself splendid in the Land of Promise, and the figure of Biela flitted, crowned with the bridal wreath.

"But what will become of your mother?" Leah asked.

Srul's soap-bubbles collapsed. He had forgotten for the moment that he had a mother.

"She might come to live with us," Leah hastened to suggest, seeing his o'erclouded face.

"Ah, no, that would be too much of a burden. And Tsirrele, too, is growing up."

"Tsirrele eats quite as much now as she will in ten years' time," said Leah, laughing, as she thought fondly of her dear, beautiful little one, her gay whimsies and odd caprices.

"And my mother does not eat very much," said Srul, wavering.

In this way Srul became a "piece," and was dumped down in the Land of Promise.