"Go now, go now!" grunted Eliphaz, with a gesture of impatience. "It shall be all well." And the white-haired head bowed immovably over its work.
In the evening Rose extracted from her father the motive of Sugarman's visit, and confessed that the idea was to her liking.
"But dost thou think he will have me, little father?" she asked, with cajoling eyes.
"Anyone would have my Rose."
"Ah, but Leibel is different. So many years he has sat at my side and said nothing."
"He had his work to think of; he is a good, saving youth."
"At this very moment Sugarman is trying to persuade him—not so? I suppose he will want much money."
"Be easy, my child." And he passed his discoloured hand over her hair.
Sugarman turned up the next day, and reported that Leibel was unobtainable under thirty pounds, and Eliphaz, weary of the contest, called over Leibel, till that moment carefully absorbed in his scientific chalk-marks, and mentioned the thing to him for the first time. "I am not a man to bargain," Eliphaz said, and so he gave the young man his tawny hand, and a bottle of rum sprang from somewhere, and work was suspended for five minutes, and the "hands" all drank amid surprised excitement. Sugarman's visits had prepared them to congratulate Rose. But Leibel was a shock.
The formal engagement was marked by even greater junketing, and at last the marriage-day came. Leibel was resplendent in a diagonal frock-coat, cut by his own hand, and Rose stepped from the cab a medley of flowers, fairness, and white silk, and behind her came two bridesmaids—her sisters—a trio that glorified the spectator-strewn pavement outside the Synagogue. Eliphaz looked almost tall in his shiny high hat and frilled shirt-front. Sugarman arrived on foot, carrying red-socked little Ebenezer tucked under his arm.