But to all her aunt's teasing references to the future, my mother answered with a giggle and a shake of her black curls, and went on enjoying herself, thinking that the day of judgment was very, very far away.

But it swooped down on her sooner than she expected--the momentous hour when she must choose between the pearl necklace with Mulke and a penniless stranger from Yuchovitch who was reputed to be a fine scholar.
Mulke she would not have even if all the pearls in the ocean came with him.

The boy was stupid and unteachable, and of unspeakable origin.
Picked up from the dirty floor of the poorhouse, his father was identified as the lazy porter who sometimes chopped a cord of wood for my grandmother; and his sisters were slovenly housemaids scattered through Polotzk.

No, Mulke was not to be considered.

But why consider anybody?
Why think of a _hossen_ at all, when she was so content?
My mother ran away every time the shadchan came, and she begged to be left as she was, and cried, and invoked her mother's support.