"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—"
"Not another farthing!" spluttered Grobstock, red as a turkey-cock.
"Very well," said the Schnorrer imperturbably, and, lifting up his voice, he called "Wilkinson!"
"Hush!" commanded Grobstock. "What are you doing?"
"I will tell Wilkinson to bring back my property."
"Wilkinson will not obey you."
"Not obey me! A servant! Why he is not even black! All the Sephardim I visit have black pages—much grander than Wilkinson—and they tremble at my nod. At Baron D'Aguilar's mansion in Broad Street Buildings there is a retinue of twenty-four servants, and they—"
"And what is your second claim?"
"Compensation for being degraded to fishmongering. I am not of those who sell things in the streets. I am a son of the Law, a student of the Talmud."