“As I live,” he muttered, “she has Gudule's very eyes.”
And with another thumping slap on his leg, he merrily exclaimed:
“All right, we'll leave it so then.... If Ephraim does n't repay me, I 'll take you, you wild thing... for you've stood surety for your brother, and then I 'll take you away, and keep you with me at home. Do you agree... you little spit-fire, eh?”
“Yes, uncle!” cried Viola.
“Then give me a kiss, Viola.”
The child hesitated for a moment, then she laid her cheek upon her uncle's face.
“Ah, now I 've got you, you little spit-fire,” he cried, kissing her again and again. “Are n't you ashamed now to have snapped your uncle up like that?”
Then after giving Ephraim some further information about the present price of oats, and the future prospects of the crops, with a side-shot at the chances of wool, skins, and other merchandise, he took his leave.
There was great surprise in the Ghetto when the barely fifteen-year-old lad made his first start in business. Many made merry over “the great merchant,” but before the year was ended, the sharp-seeing eyes of the Ghetto saw that Ephraim had “a lucky hand.” Whatever he undertook he followed up with a calmness and tact which often baffled the restless activity of many a big dealer, with all his cuteness and trickery. Whenever Ephraim, with his pale, sad face, made his appearance at a farmstead, to negotiate for the purchase of wool, or some such matter, it seemed as though some invisible messenger had gone before him to soften the hearts of the farmers. “No one ever gets things as cheap as you do,” he was assured by many a farmer's wife, who had been won by the unconscious eloquence of his dark eyes. No longer did people laugh at “the little merchant,” for nothing so quickly kills ridicule as success.
When, two years later, his Uncle Gabriel came again to see how the children were getting on, Ephraim was enabled to repay, in hard cash, the money he had lent him.