Then he stationed himself in Petticoat Lane, crying, in his imperfect
English, "Lemans, verra good lemans, two a penny each, two a penny
each!"




CHAPTER IV.

THE REDEMPTION OF THE SON AND THE DAUGHTER.


Malka did not have long to wait for her liege lord. He was a
fresh-colored young man of thirty, rather good-looking, with side
whiskers, keen, eager glance, and an air of perpetually doing business.
Though a native of Germany, he spoke English as well as many Lane Jews,
whose comparative impiety was a certificate of British birth. Michael
Birnbaum was a great man in the local little synagogue if only one of
the crowd at "Duke's Plaizer." He had been successively _Gabbai_ and
_Parnass_, or treasurer and president, and had presented the plush
curtain, with its mystical decoration of intersecting triangles, woven
in silk, that hung before the Ark in which the scrolls of the Law were
kept. He was the very antithesis of Moses Ansell. His energy was
restless. From hawking he had risen to a profitable traffic in gold lace
and Brummagem jewelry, with a large _clientèle_ all over the country,
before he was twenty. He touched nothing which he did not profit by; and
when he married, at twenty-three, a woman nearly twice his age, the
transaction was not without the usual percentage. Very soon his line was
diamonds,--real diamonds. He carried, a pocket-knife which was a
combination of a corkscrew, a pair of scissors, a file, a pair of