ck behind his coat tails.
The traveller resumed his walk. Reb' Lebe moved another step. The
stranger was not looking. The rebbe's courage rose, he advanced
towards the table; he stretched out his hand for the knife. At that
instant the door opened, the carriage was announced. The eager
traveller, without noticing Reb' Lebe, swept up sausage and knife,
just at the moment when the timid rebbe was about to cut himself a
delicious slice. I saw his discomfiture from my corner, and I am
obliged to confess that I enjoyed it. His face always looked foolish
to me after that; but, fortunately for us both, we did not study
together much longer.

* * * * *

Two little girls dressed in their best, shining from their curls to
their shoes. One little girl has rosy cheeks, the other has staring
eyes. Rosy-Cheeks carries a carpet bag; Big-Eyes carries a new slate.
Hand in hand they go into the summer morning, so happy and pretty a
pair that it is no wonder people look after them, from window and
door; and that other little girls, not dressed in their best and
carrying no carpet bags, stand in the street gaping after them.

Let the folks stare; no harm can come to the little sisters. Did not
grandmother tie pepper and salt into the corners of their pockets, to
ward off the evil eye? The little maids see nothing but the road
ahead, so eager are they upon their errand. Carpet bag and slate
proclaim that errand: Rosy-Cheeks and Big-Eyes are going to school.

I have no words to describe the pride with which my sister and I
crossed the threshold of Isaiah the Scribe. Hitherto we had been to
heder, to a rebbe; now we were to study with a _lehrer_, a secular
teacher. There was all the difference in the world between the two.
The one taught you Hebrew only, which every girl learned; the other
could teach Yiddish and Russian and, some said, even German; and how
to write a letter, and how to do sums without a counting-frame, just
on a piece of paper; accomplishments which were extremely rare among
girls in Polotzk. But nothing was too high for the grandchildren of
Raphael the Russian; they had "good heads," everybody knew. So we were
sent to Reb' Isaiah.

My first school, where I was so proud to be received, was a hovel on
the edge of a swamp. The schoolroom was gray within and without. The
door was so low that Reb' Isaiah had to stoop in passing. The little
windows were murky. The walls were bare, but the low