“Well, sir,” said Mr. Isaacs, “the good wife is the very best jewelry. Those are two dollars. But only study this pair. Hold those up to the light and take a bird's-eye view through those lovely stones, so round and large like green peas. Now look. So! Now let your friend look!”
“I 'm no judge,” said the other man, “I know what pleases me—that's all. But them would make a great display, David, wouldn't they?”
“You 're right, sir,” said Mr. Isaacs. “'Display' is the very word. My wife wear just the twins of this pair to the congregation, every week.”
Mrs. Isaacs raised her eyebrows: she wore nothing but diamonds.
“What's the price of these green ones?” asked David.
Mr. Isaacs shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose those are the finest articles of the kind in the whole creation,” he said. “We can let you have those to-day,” and he lowered his voice to a whisper, and put his hand up beside his mouth, “to close out stock—for six dollars. They cost us only last week eight-fifty, but we are obliged to reduce stock prior to removal. The building is to be taken down.”
“I would like those tip-top; but I don't know—it's a good deal of money for gewgaws; my wife would take me to do for it; I guess I must keep to the two-dollar ones. I come pretty hard by my dollars, and a dollar means a good deal to me just now.”
“But just once look again,” said Mr. Isaacs, and he stepped briskly behind his wife and held up an ear-ring to each of her ears. “See them on a chaste and lovely form. With these your wife will be still more lovely. All those other men will say, 'Where did that graceful lady find so rich ear-rings?' You will see they are a great success: her most bosom friends will hate her; they will turn so green like the grass on the ground with envy. It is a great pleasure when my wife wears those kind: her very sisters cannot speak for anger, and her own mother looks so rigid like the Cardiff Giant.”
“Well, I guess I shall have to take them,” said David, “and you 'll have to wrap them right up: we have n't got more than about time to get the train, have we, Calvin?”