As it happened, I had not at that moment the choice.

My friend had gone in, and I dared not stay among the people outside.

I groped my way into the shop, which was so dark as well as dingy that they had lighted a small oil-lamp just above the head of the man who served out the slops.

Even so the light that fell on him was dim and fitful, and was the means of giving me another start in which I gasped out--"Moses Benson!" The man turned and smiled (he had the Jew-clerk's exact smile), and said softly, "Cohen, my dear, not Benson." And as he bent at another angle of the oil-lamp I saw that he was older than the clerk, and dirtier; and though his coat was quite curiously like the one I had so often cleaned, he had evidently either never met with the invaluable "scouring drops," or did not feel it worth while to make use of them in such a dingy hole.
One shock helped to cure the other.

Come what might, I could not sneak back now to the civil congratulations of that other Moses, and the scorn of his eye.