store to store, and from house to house,
peddling tea or other ware; and both were hard to bear. Many a winter
morning she arose in the dark, to tramp three or four miles in the
gripping cold, through the dragging snow, with a pound of tea for a
distant customer; and her profit was perhaps twenty kopecks. Many a
time she fell on the ice, as she climbed the steep bank on the far
side of the Dvina, a heavy basket on each arm. More than once she
fainted at the doors of her customers, ashamed to knock as suppliant
where she had used to be received as an honored guest. I hope the
angels did not have to count the tears that fell on her frost-bitten,
aching hands as she counted her bitter earnings at night.

And who took care of us children while my mother tramped the streets
with her basket? Why, who but Fetchke? Who but the little housewife of
twelve? Sure of our safety was my mother with Fetchke to watch; sure
of our comfort with Fetchke to cook the soup and divide the scrap of
meat and remember the next meal. Joseph was in heder all day; the baby
was a quiet little thing; Mashke was no worse than usual. But still
there was plenty to do, with order to keep in a crowded room, and the
washing, and the mending. And Fetchke did it all. She went to the
river with the women to wash the clothes, and tucked up her dress and
stood bare-legged in the water, like the rest of them, and beat and
rubbed with all her might, till our miserable rags gleamed white
again.

And I? I usually had a cold, or a cough, or something to disable me;
and I never had any talent for housework. If I swept and sanded the
floor, polished the samovar, and ran errands, I was doing much. I
minded the baby, who did not need much minding. I was willing enough,
I suppose, but the hard things were done without my help.

Not that I mean to belittle the part that I played in our reduced
domestic economy. Indeed, I am very particular to get all the credit
due me. I always remind my sister Deborah, who was the baby of those
humble days, that it was I who pierced her ears. Earrings were a
requisite part of a girl's toilet. Even a beggar girl must have
earrings, were they only loops of thread with glass beads. I heard my
mother bemoan the baby because she had not time to pierce her ears.
Promptly I armed myself with a coarse needle and a spool of thread,
and towed Deborah out into the woodshed. The operation was entirely
successful, though the baby was entirely ungra