Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/42

28 28 THE KING OF SCHNORRERS.

" I will repay your money ! " he cried. " Here are your two guineas. You will get another salmon, and more cheaply. As you pointed out, you could have got this for twenty-five shillings."

" Two guineas ! " ejaculated Manasseh contemptuously. " Why you offered Jonathan, the fishmonger, three ! "

Grobstock was astounded, but it was beneath him to bar- gain. And he remembered that, after all, he would enjoy the salmon.

" Well, here are three guineas," he said pacifically, offer- ing them.

"Three guineas!" echoed Manasseh, spurning them. "And what of my profit?"

" Profit ! " gasped Grobstock.

" Since you have made me a middle-man, since you have forced me into the fish trade, I must have my profits like anybody else."

" Here is a crown extra ! "

" And my compensation? "

"What do you mean? " enquired Grobstock, exasperated. " Compensation for what? "

" For what? For two things at the very least," Manasseh said unswervingly. " In the first place," and as he began his logically divided reply his tone assumed the sing-song sacred to Talmudical dialectics, " compensation for not eating the salmon myself. For it is not as if I offered it you — I merely entrusted it to you, and it is ordained in Exodus that if a man shall deliver unto his neighbour an ass, or an ox, or a sheep, or any beast to keep, then for every matter of trespass, whether it be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for raiment, or for any manner of lost thing, the man shall receive double, and therefore you should pay me six guineas. And secondly

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