"How funny people are! Why do they interfere in what does not concern them? She said herself that she had more than she wanted. And three greven would have been very consoling to me."
The very sight of money evidently pleased him. While he was talking he loved to clean the silver and brass on his breeches, and would polish coins till they shone. Moving his eyebrows up and down, he would gaze at them, holding them in his crooked fingers before his snub-nosed face. But he was not avaricious.
One day he asked me to play with him, but I could not. "You don't know how?" he cried. "How is that? And you call yourself educated! You must learn. We will play for lumps of sugar."
He won from me half a pound of the best sugar, and hid every lump in his furry cheek. As soon as he found that I knew how to play he said:
"Now we will play seriously for money. Have you any money?"
"I have five rubles."
"And I have two."
As may be imagined, he soon won from me. Desiring to have my revenge, I staked my jacket, worth five rubles, and lost. Then I staked my new boots, and lost again. Yaakov said to me, unwillingly, almost crossly:
"No, you don't know how to play yet; you get too hot about it. You must go and stake everything, even your boots. I don't care for that sort of thing. Come, take back your clothes and your money,—four rubles,—and I will keep a ruble for teaching you. Agreed?"
I was very grateful to him.