"Only a mark and a half!" exclaimed Vjera. "And the skin, how much for that?"
"It is a genuine Russian wolf," Schmidt put in. "And it is very large."
"Moth-eaten," said the Jewess. "And there is a hole in the side. Five marks."
Schmidt held the fur up to the light and blew into it with a professional air, as furriers do.
"Look at that!" he cried, persuasively. "Why, it is worth twenty!"
The Hebrew lady, instead of answering extended a fat thumb and a plump, pointed forefinger, and pinching a score of hairs between the two, pulled them out without effort, and then held them close to the Cossack's eyes.
"Five marks," she repeated, getting the money out and preparing to fill in a couple of pawn-tickets.
"Make it ten, with the samovar!" entreated Vjera. The Jewess smiled.
"Do you think the samovar is of gold?" she inquired. "Six and a half for the two. Take it or leave it."
Vjera looked at Schmidt anxiously as though to ask his opinion.
"They will not give more," he said, in Russian.
The girl took the money and the flimsy tickets and they went out into the street. Vjera hesitated as to the direction she should take, and Schmidt looked to her as though awaiting her orders.
"Twenty-eight and a half and six and a half are thirty-five," she said, thoughtfully. "And we have nothing more to give, but this. I must sell it, Herr Schmidt."
"Well, what is it?" he asked, glad to know the secret at last.
"It is my mother's hair. She cut it off herself when she knew she was dying and she told me to sell it if ever I needed a little money."
The girl's voice trembled violently, and she turned her head away. Schmidt was silent and very grave. Then Vjera began to move on again, clutching the precious thing to her bosom and drawing her shawl over it.
"The best man for this lives in the Maffei Strasse," said Schmidt after a few minutes.
"Show me the way." Vjera turned as he directed. At that moment she would have lost herself in the familiar streets, had he not been there to guide her.
The hairdresser's shop was brilliantly lighted, and as good fortune would have it, there were no customers within. With an entreating glance which he obeyed, Vjera made Schmidt wait outside.
"Please do not look!" she whispered. "I can bear it better alone." The good fellow nodded and began to walk up and down.