“I was so scared I’d be lonesome here, so far away from what I’m used to,” she said, with a look that told him that a woman’s home is where love is. “Now I wonder how I’ll ever be able to go back,” she finished softly.
“Go back! You got to stay!” he commanded masterfully. “And I’ll see that you shouldn’t be so skinny. You got to eat more.” And suiting his action to his word, he forced more candy upon the already over-filled girl.
Then he offered to teach her how to play cards. “Minnie and Abe are such grand poker players,” he explained.
“My sister Minnie playing cards?”
“Shah! Little queen, you’ll have to learn cards, too. There ain’t no other pleasure for women here, except cards or the movies or vaudeville, and the bills don’t change more than once a week.” And he told her that it was the custom in their group to play every night in a different house.
A sudden pity gripped him. He longed to brighten the lonely look of this little greenhorn, put roses into her pale thin cheeks.
“Tell me what is your best pleasure,” he asked with the sweeping manner of a Rothschild.
“Ach! How I love music!” The glow of an inner sun lit up her face. “I can’t afford a seat in the opera, but even if I have to stand all evening and save the pennies from my mouth, music I’ve got to have.”
“Hah—ha!” He laughed in advance of his own humour. “My sweetest music is the click of the cash register. The ring of the dollars I make is grander to me than the best songs on the phonograph.”
His face became suddenly alive. For the first time she saw Moe galvanized into a man of action, a man of power. The light that burned throughout the ages in the eyes of poets and prophets burned also in the eyes of the traders of her race.