The pawnbroker looked at him. With the unerring instinct of his race, he knew that this was not play-acting, that there was something behind it—something real. The sense of romance, of great things all about them transcending the ordinary things of life—this in the Jews has survived centuries of torment, shame, cruelty, and oppression. This inherited sense of romance in the pawnbroker now leaped to answer Dickie's appeal. (And I do hope I am not confusing you; stick to it; read it again if you don't understand. What I mean is that the Jews always see the big beautiful things; they don't just see that gray is made of black and white; they see how incredibly black black can be, and that there may be a whiteness transcending all the whitest dreams in the world.)
"You're a rum little chap," was what the pawnbroker said, "but I like your pluck. Every man's got to make a fool of himself one time or the other," he added, apologizing to the spirit of business.
"You mean you will?" said Dickie eagerly.
"More fool me," said the Jew, feeling in his pocket.
"You won't be sorry; not in the end you won't," said Dickie, as the pawnbroker laid certain monies before him on the mahogany counter. "You'll lend me this? You'll trust me?"
"Looks like it," said the Jew.
"Then some day I shall do something for you. I don't know what, but something. We never forget, we——" He stopped. He remembered that he was poor little lame Dickie Harding, with no right to that other name which had been his in the dream.
He picked up the coins, put them in his pocket—felt the moon-seeds.
"I cannot repay your kindness," he said, "though some day I will repay your silver. But these seeds—the moon-seeds," he pulled out a handful. "You liked the flowers?" He handed a generous score across the red-brown polished wood.
"Thank you, my lad," said the pawnbroker. "I'll raise them in gentle heat."