A soon-to-be groom prepares himself for his marriage in the following week as his father is dying. He muses about what his soon-to-be wife thinks about his parents. His mother is memorable, small and feisty, with a “noiseless dignity about her.” His father, however, worries him. The man is surly, and talks quite a bit about the hardships and misfortunes of his past as a poor Jewish boy. His own father had died, then his mother quickly after that. Yet despite the traumatic events, his father had remembered that, he too, had a bride to be and married the groom’s mother. The groom, however, wishes more than anything to prolong his father’s life and live happily once again as a family without the current troubles on his mind.