The child joined in and sang through his tears. V MARRIED (Told by a Woman) I remember myself at the time when I played marbles and made mud cakes in the yard; in winter I sat all day indoors and rocked a little brother who was born sickly, and who lingered on into his seventh year, when he died of a decline. In summer, whenever it was sunny, the poor little creature sat in the yard, warmed itself in the sun, and watched me playing marbles. In winter it never left its cradle, and I told it stories and sang to it. The other boys all went to Cheder. Mother was always busy, she had at least ten Parnossehs. Poor mother! she peddled, she baked gingerbread, she helped at circumcisions and weddings, she was a Tikerin, a grave-measurer,[10] recited prayers, and bought in provisions for better-class households. Father earned three rubles a week keeping accounts for Reb Zeinwill Terkelbaum in the forest. And those were the good times; teachers were paid, and the rent, too--almost on rent-day,--and we never had to eat our bread dry. Sometimes mother would bake a cake for supper; then there was quite a feast. But that happened seldom. Mother usually came home late and tired; often with red eyes and in a bitter mood. She would complain that the well-to-do ladies owed her money. They would get her to lay out her money for them, and then tell her to come for the money to-morrow, the day after; meantime more purchases were made, and when it came to a reckoning, the house-mistress could not remember if she hadn't already paid for the day before yesterday's quarter of a pound of butter--and she "put it aside" to ask her husband about it, who was there at the time--he has a tenacious memory, and will certainly remember how it was. Next morning it turns out the husband came home too late from the house-of-study, and she forgot to ask him. On the third day she says, with a pleased expression, that she asked her husband about it, and he was angry with her for bothering him, "as if he had nothing better to do than attend to the affairs of a couple of women;" and it is settled that she, the madam, shall try to remember herself. Presently she begins to feel sure the butter was included in the account after all; a little later, she is ready to build on it; and when poor mother reminded her of the butter again, she was called a pert hussy, who was trying to get an extra gulden by trickery--and she was assured that if they heard any more about the butter, she need never show herself there again. Mother, who was herself the daughter of well-to-do parents, and would have been a lady herself, were it not for the nobleman who took her dowry, could not accept this meekly. She frequently came home with swollen eyelids, threw herself on the bed with a burst of tears, and lay there weeping bitterly till her heart was eased, when she stood up and cooked us Kliskelech[11] with beans.