etter
to have talked about the fair, about a loan. Now it is too late:

"I have no need of money!" and Chayyim gave a despairing look at
Loibe-Baeres' cheerful face, at the two little boys who sat opposite and
watched him with sly, mischievous eyes, and who whispered knowingly to
each other, and then smiled more knowingly still!

A cold perspiration covered him. He rose from his chair.

"You are going already?" observed Loibe-Baeres, politely.

"Now perhaps I could ask him!" It flashed across Chayyim's mind that he
might yet save himself, but, stealing a glance at the two boys with the
roguish eyes that watched him so slyly, he replied with dignity:

"I must! Business! There is no time!" and it seems to him, as he goes
toward the door, that the two little boys with the mischievous eyes are
putting out their tongues after him, and that Loibe-Baeres himself smiles
and says, "Stick your tongues out further, further still!"

Chayyim's shoulders seem to burn, and he makes haste to get out of the
house.

THE TWO BROTHERS

It is three months since Yainkele and Berele--two brothers, the first
fourteen years old, the second sixteen--have been at the college that
stands in the town of X--, five German miles from their birthplace
Dalissovke, after which they are called the "Dalissovkers."

Yainkele is a slight, pale boy, with black eyes that peep slyly from
beneath the two black eyebrows. Berele is taller and stouter than
Yainkele, his eyes are lighter, and his glance is more defiant, as
though he would say, "Let me alone, I shall laugh at you all yet!"

The two brothers lodged with a poor relation, a widow, a dealer in
second-hand goods, who never came home till late at night. The two
brothers had no bed, but a chest, which was broad enough, served
instead, and the brothers slept sweetly on it, covered with their own
torn clothes; and in their dreams they saw their native place, the
little street, their home, their father with his long beard and dim eyes
and bent back, and their mother with her long, pale, melancholy face,
and they heard the little brothers and sisters quarrelling, as they
fought over a bit of herring, and they dreamt other dreams of home, and
early in the morning they were homesick, and then they used to run to
the Dalissovke Inn, and ask the carrier if there were a letter for them
from home.

The Dalissovke carriers were good Jews with soft hearts, and they were
sorry for the two poor boys,