"If I am in want!" repeated the Schnorrer scornfully. "Is there anything I do not want?" "You are married?" "You correct me—wife and children are the only things I do not lack." "No pauper does," quoth Grobstock, with a twinkle of restored humour. [12] [12] "No," assented the Schnorrer sternly. "The poor man has the fear of Heaven. He obeys the Law and the Commandments. He marries while he is young—and his spouse is not cursed with barrenness. It is the rich man who transgresses the Judgment, who delays to come under the Canopy." "Ah! well, here is a guinea—in the name of my wife," broke in Grobstock laughingly. "Or stay—since you do not brush spatterdashes—here is another." "In the name of my wife," rejoined the Schnorrer with dignity, "I thank you." "Thank me in your own name," said Grobstock. "I mean tell it me." "I am Manasseh Bueno Barzillai Azevedo da Costa," he answered simply. "A Sephardi!" exclaimed the philanthropist. "Is it not written on my face, even as it is written on yours that you are a Tedesco? It is the first time that I have taken gold from one of your lineage." "Oh, indeed!" murmured Grobstock, beginning to feel small again. "Yes—are we not far richer than your community? What need have I to take the good deeds away from my own people—they have too few opportunities for beneficence as it is, being so many of them wealthy; brokers and West India merchants, and—" "But I, too, am a financier, and an East India Director," Grobstock reminded him. "Maybe; but your community is yet young and struggling—your rich men are as the good men in Sodom for multitude. You are the immigrants of yesterday—refugees from the Ghettoes of Russia and Poland and Germany. But we, as you are aware, have been established here for
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