"If your own community cannot support you," said Grobstock, more loudly, and with all the boldness of an animal driven to bay, "why not go to Abraham Goldsmid, or his brother Ben, or to Van Oven, or Oppenheim—they're all more prosperous than I."
"Sir!" said Manasseh wrathfully. "You are a skilful—nay, a famous, financier. You know what stocks to buy, what stocks to sell, when to follow a rise, and when a fall. When the Premier advertises the loans, a thousand speculators look to you for guidance. What would you say if I presumed to interfere in your financial affairs—if I told you to issue these shares or to call in those? You would tell me to mind my own business; and you would be perfectly right. Now Schnorring is my business. Trust me, I know best whom to come to. You stick to stocks and leave Schnorring alone. You are the King of Financiers, but I am the King of Schnorrers."
Grobstock's resentment at the rejoinder was mitigated by the compliment to his financial insight. To be put on the same level with the Beggar was indeed unexpected.
"Will you have a cup of coffee?" he said.
"I ought scarcely to drink with you after your reception of me," replied Manasseh unappeased. "It is not even as if I came to schnorr for myself; it is to the finances of our house of worship that I wished to give you an opportunity of contributing."
"Aha! your vaunted community hard up?" queried Joseph, with a complacent twinkle.
"Sir! We are the richest congregation in the world. We want nothing from anybody," indignantly protested Manasseh, as he absent-mindedly took the cup of coffee which Grobstock had ordered for him. "The difficulty merely is that, in honour of my daughter's wedding, I have donated a hundred pounds to the Synagogue which I have not yet managed to collect, although I have already devoted a day-and-a-half of my valuable time to the purpose."
"But why do you come to me?"
"What! Do you ask me that again?"
"I—I—mean," stammered Grobstock—"why should I contribute to a Portuguese Synagogue?"