Isaac wheeled suddenly and drew himself up.  His little mouse eyes were snapping, and his face fiery red.

“You will not take them!  Why?”

“I don’t know—­I can’t!”

“I know!” he cried angrily, but with a certain dignity.  “It is because I am a Jew.  Not because I am a tailor—­you have too much sense for that—­but because I am a Jew!”

“Oh, Mr. Cohen!”

“Yes—­I know—­I see inside of you.  I read you just as if you were a page in a book.  Who taught you to think that?  Not your Uncle Peter; he loves me—­I love him.  Who taught you such nonsense?” His voice had risen with every sentence.  In his indignation he looked twice his size.  “Is not my money as good as that man Breen’s—­who insults you when you go to him?—­and who laughed at you?  Have I laughed at you?  Does Mr. Grayson laugh?”

Jack tried to interrupt, but the tailor’s words poured on.

“And now let me tell you one thing more, Mr. John Breen.  I do not give you the bonds.  I give them to Mr. Grayson.  Never once has he insulted me as you do now.  All these years—­fifteen years this winter—­he has been my friend.  And now when the boy whom he loves wants some money for a friend, and Mr. Grayson has none to give him, and I, who am Mr. Grayson’s friend, come to help that boy out of his trouble, you—­you—­remember, you who have nothing to do with it—­you turn up your nose and stop it all.  Are you not ashamed of yourself?”

Jack’s eyes blazed.  He was not accustomed to be spoken to in that way by anybody; certainly not by a tailor.

“Then give them to Uncle Peter,” Jack flung back.  “See what he will say.”

“No, I will not give them to your Uncle Peter.  It will spoil everything with me if he knows about it.  He always does things for me behind my back.  He never lets me know.  Now I shall do something for him behind his back and not let him know.”

“But—­”

“There are no buts!  Listen to me, young man.  I have no son; I have no grandchild; I live here alone—­you see how small it is?  Do you know why?—­because I am happiest here.  I know what it is to suffer, and I know what it is for other people to suffer.  I have seen more misery in London in a year than you will see in your whole life.  Those ten bonds there are of no more use to me than an extra coat of paint on that door.  I have many more like them shut up in a box.  Almost every day people come to me for money—­ sometimes they get it—­oftener they do not.  I have no money for beggars, or for idlers, or for liars.  I have worked all my life, and shall to the end—­and so must they.  Now and then something happens like this.  Now do you understand?”

Again Jack tried to speak.  His anger was gone; the pathos in the Jew’s voice had robbed him of all antagonism, but Cohen would allow no interruptions.

“And now one thing more before I let you speak, And then I am through.  In all the years I have known Mr. Grayson, this is the first time I have ever been able to help him with the only thing I have that can help him—­my money.  If it was five times what you want, he should have it.  Do you hear?  Five times!”