"The poor boy needs a good soft bed, fine chicken
soup, and real care. Why didn't you let me know at once? Come
on, David!"
"Where to?" I inquired, timidly.
"None of your business. Come on. I'm not going to take you to the
woods, you may be sure of that. I want you to stay in my house
until you are well rested and strong enough to study. Don't you
like it?" she added, with a wink to the beadle
It appeared that her husband was away on one of his prolonged
business excursions. Otherwise installing in her "modern" home
an old-fashioned, ridiculous young creature like a Talmud student
would have been out of the question
I followed her with fast-beating heart. I knew that her family was
"modern," that her children spoke Russian and "behaved like
Gentiles," that there was a grown young woman among them and
that her name was Matilda
The case of this young woman had been the talk of the town the
year before.
She had been persuaded to marry a man for whom she did not
care, and shortly after the wedding and after a sensational passage
at arms between his people and hers, she made her father pay him
a small fortune for divorcing her
Matilda's family being one of the "upper ten" in our town, its
members were frequently the subject of envious gossip, and so I
had known a good deal about them even before Shiphrah
befriended me.
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