The women, too, shared in the excitement of the morning. Their windows were glistening with eyes, and the reports of their lucky occupants to the anxious knots in the rear evoked hubbubs of conflicting interjections which came near involving the matronly assemblage in civil war.
The Third Section brought some twenty-eight rubles, net. Asriel was certain that the last bid had been made by him, and that the honor and the good deed were accordingly his. When it came to the reading, however, and the Third Section was reached, the reader called out Reb Lippe's name.
Asriel was stupefied.
"Hold on! That won't do!" he thundered, suddenly feeling himself an American citizen. "I have bought it and I mean to have it." His face was fire; his eyes looked havoc.
A wave of deprecation swept over the room. Dozens of reading-desks were slapped for order. Reb Lippe strode up to the platform, pompous, devout, resplendent in the gold lace of his praying-shawl and the flowing silver of his beard, as though the outburst of indignation against Asriel were only an ovation to himself. He had the cunning of a fox, the vanity of a peacock, and the sentimentality of a woman during the Ten Days of Penance. There were many skeptics as to the fairness of the transaction, but these were too deeply impressed by the grandeur of his triumphal march to whisper an opinion. The prodigy alone spoke his mind.
"Why, I do think the other man was the last to nod—may I be ill if he was not," the enfant terrible said quite audibly, and was hushed by his uncle.
"Is he really going to get it?" Asriel resumed, drowning all opposition with his voice. "Milk a billy-goat! You can't play that trick on me! Mine was the last bid. Twenty-eight scurvy rubles! Pshaw! I am willing to pay a hundred, two hundred, five hundred. I can buy up all Pravly, Reb Lippe, his gold lace and all, and sell him at a loss, too!" He made a dash at the reading-platform, as if to take the Third Section by force, but the bedlam which his sally called forth checked him.
"Is this a market-place?" cried the second trustee, with conscious indignation.
"Shut the mouth of that boor!" screamed a member, in sincere disgust.
"Put him out!" yelled another, with relish in the scene.