The maid handed him a glass of tea. He said, "Thank you," and then was sorry: it is not the proper thing to thank a servant. He grew red and bit his lips.
"Have some jelly with it!" Loibe-Bäres suggested.
"An excellent man, an excellent man!" thought Chayyim, astonished. "He is sure to lend."
"You deal in something?" asked Loibe-Bäres.
"Why, yes," answered Chayyim. "One's little bit of business, thank Heaven, is no worse than other people's!"
"What price are oats fetching now?" it occurred to the Gevir to ask.
Oats had fallen of late, but it seemed better to Chayyim to say that they had risen.
"They have risen very much!" he declared in a mercantile tone of voice.
"Well, and have you some oats ready?" inquired the Gevir further.
"I've got a nice lot of oats, and they didn't cost me much, either. I got them quite cheap," replied Chayyim, with more warmth, forgetting, while he spoke, that he hadn't had an ear of oats in his granary for weeks.