Secondly--as the rabbi of Skul observed more than once--a widow who depends on her children is a double grass-widow, and "the words of the rabbi of Skul should be framed in gold and worn about the neck as an _Öibele_." True, she says with a low sigh, _Öibeles_ are not worn nowadays, imitation pearls are considered prettier! She could not stay on in Skul. Since her husband the rabbi died, the place has become hateful to her. "Really," she says, "'its glory has departed, its splendor, and its beauty.'" She goes there once a year, for the anniversary of his death, but she cannot remain long--"it has grown empty." She lived with the Skul rabbi forty years. Those that knew him say that she grew to be his second self. He, may he forgive me! was a Misnagid; so she thinks nothing of "good Jews!" His "service" was the Torah in its plain meaning. She sits all day over the Pentateuch in Yiddish, or learns the Shulchan Aruch;[95] she quotes the Skul rabbi at every second word and it is his voice, his motions, his customs! After the Skul rabbi's Kiddush and Havdoleh, she will listen to no other; she says her own over cake or currant wine. And _her_ Kiddush is _his_ Kiddush--the same low, dignified chant, the same sweetness. She eats "just kosher" and is very learned. She can answer ritual questions! Forty years running she has stood by the hearth with her kind face turned to the table at which her husband sat and studied; her dove's eyes took in his every movement, her ears, half hidden under the head-kerchief, his every word, she was his true helpmeet, she hid his every thought in her brain and his goodness in her heart. A river may have lain a hundred years in another bed, and all its previous twists and bends are wrought into the rocks of its first one. The Skul rabbi's life may have run more peacefully than a river, but the rebbitzin was no rock to him, rather a sponge that absorbed the whole of him. She is not satisfied with the world as it is to-day. "If it is no longer pious, the Almighty must have a care; if His people behave so, it is doubtless because He wishes it. Only, there is no 'purpose' in it all; the present-day stuffs are spider-webs, and people don't sew as they used to, they cut it all up into seams! "Don't talk to me of the curtains before the Ark, you can't make so much as a frock for a child out of them! The old-fashioned head-dresses get dearer every day, a head-kerchief ought to last forever, and even out of a bosom-kerchief you can always draw a gold or silver thread, but imitation pearls and glass spangles are good for nothing. And, believe me, it is all much uglier, in my opinion!" But she bears no one a grudge: "My husband, the Skul rabbi, was a Misnagid, but he never persecuted a Chossid, heaven forbid!"