The brown man smiled, and raised his hand with a deprecatory gesture. “Many things are valuable,” said he, “but time is the most valuable of all. And time to us means life.”
The Jew saw the covert threat, and grew more irritable still.
“Get to your business,” he said sharply.
The brown man leant on the counter, and regarded him with a pair of fierce, brown eyes, which age had not dimmed.
“You are a reasonable man,” he said slowly, “a good merchant. I can see it. But sometimes a good merchant makes a bad bargain. In that case what does the good merchant do?”
“Get out of here,” said the Jew angrily.
“He makes the best of it,” continued the other calmly, “and he is a lucky man if he is not too late to repair the mischief. You are not too late.”
The Jew laughed boisterously.
“There was a sailor once made a bad bargain,” said the brown man, still in the same even tones, “and he died—of grief.”
He grinned at this pleasantry until his face looked like a cracked mask.