A Ghetto Violet | Page 8

spit-fire, eh?"
"Yes, uncle!" cried Viola.
"Then give me a kiss, Viola."
The child hesitated for a moment, then she laid her cheek upon her
uncle's face.

"Ah, now I 've got you, you little spit-fire," he cried, kissing her again
and again. "Are n't you ashamed now to have snapped your uncle up
like that?"
Then after giving Ephraim some further information about the present
price of oats, and the future prospects of the crops, with a side-shot at
the chances of wool, skins, and other merchandise, he took his leave.
There was great surprise in the Ghetto when the barely fifteen-year-old
lad made his first start in business. Many made merry over "the great
merchant," but before the year was ended, the sharp-seeing eyes of the
Ghetto saw that Ephraim had "a lucky hand." Whatever he undertook
he followed up with a calmness and tact which often baffled the restless
activity of many a big dealer, with all his cuteness and trickery.
Whenever Ephraim, with his pale, sad face, made his appearance at a
farmstead, to negotiate for the purchase of wool, or some such matter, it
seemed as though some invisible messenger had gone before him to
soften the hearts of the farmers. "No one ever gets things as cheap as
you do," he was assured by many a farmer's wife, who had been won
by the unconscious eloquence of his dark eyes. No longer did people
laugh at "the little merchant," for nothing so quickly kills ridicule as
success.
When, two years later, his Uncle Gabriel came again to see how the
children were getting on, Ephraim was enabled to repay, in hard cash,
the money he had lent him.
"Oho!" cried Gudule's brother, with big staring eyes, as he clutched his
legs with both hands, "how have you managed in so short a time to
save so much? D' ye know that that 's a great deal of money?"
"I 've had good luck, uncle," said Ephraim, modestly.
"You 've been... playing, perhaps?"
The words fell bluntly from the rough countryman, but hardly had they
been uttered, when Viola sprang from her chair, as though an adder had
stung her. "Uncle," she cried, and a small fist hovered before Gabriel's

eyes in such a threatening manner that he involuntarily closed them.
But the child, whose features reminded him so strongly of his dead
sister, could not make him angry.
"Ephraim," he exclaimed, in a jocund tone, warding off Viola with his
hands, "you take my advice. Take this little spit-fire with you into the
village one day... they may want a young she-wolf there." Then he
pocketed the money.
"Well, Ephraim," said he, "may God bless you, and grant you further
luck. But you won't blame me if I take the money,--I can do with it, and
in oats, as you know, there's some chance of good business just now.
But I am glad to see that you 're so prompt at paying. Never give too
much credit! That 's always my motto; trust means ruin, and eats up a
man's business, as rats devour the contents of a corn-barn."
There was but one thing that constantly threw its dark shadow across
these two budding lives,--it was the dark figure in a distant prison. This
it was that saddened the souls of the two children with a gloom which
no sunshine could dispel. When on Fridays Ephraim returned, fatigued
and weary from his work, to the home over which Viola presided with
such pathetic housewifely care, no smile of welcome was on her face,
no greeting on his. Ephraim, 't is true, told his sister where he had been,
and what he had done, but in the simplest words there vibrated that tone
of unutterable sadness which has its constant dwelling-place in such
sorely-tried hearts.
Meanwhile, a great change had come over Viola. Nature continues her
processes of growth and development 'mid the tempests of human grief,
and often the fiercer the storm the more beautiful the after effects.
Viola was no longer the pale child, "the little spit-fire," by whom her
Uncle Gabriel's arm had been seized in such a violent grip. A womanly
gentleness had come over her whole being, and already voices were
heard in the Ghetto praising her grace and beauty, which surpassed
even the loveliness of her dead mother in her happiest days. Many an
admiring eye dwelt upon the beautiful girl, many a longing glance was
cast in the direction of the little house, where she dwelt with her brother.
But the daughter of a "gambler," the child of a man who was

undergoing imprisonment for the indulgence of his shameful vice! That
was a picture from which many an admirer shrank with horror!
One day Ephraim brought home a young canary