The auctioneer raised his stereotyped wail: It was giving the lot away; a chance like that might never occur again; let him say fifty-one. “Come, gentlemen! Shall I say fifty-one? No?” He would sell at fifty, then—sell this unique work at the low figure of fifty pounds. “Any advance on fifty pounds?” He raised his hammer.
“Not for me,” said the dealer, turning away. “Let him have it.”
Down came the hammer. “Gardener: fifty pounds,” murmured Mr. Bull, with a very satisfied face. The purchaser stood stupefied.
Two flurried gentlemen at this moment entered the room. They seemed more rivals than friends, and each shouldered the other rather rudely.
“Too late, by gosh!” growled one.
“Not a bit,” said the second, pushing past. “We’ll get the vendee to put it up again. I dare say he’ll do it.”
“Here!” cried the first, grasping at the other’s receding figure.
Jibbing together, they made their way towards Gardener, who was standing in rueful and dumbfounded altercation with the lawyer. A brief but very earnest discussion took place among the four. At the end, the rostrum was invoked, the picture was replaced on the table, the two new-comers took up position. Gardener, mute and dazed, fell back, in custody of the lawyer, who stood with a hard, shrewd glitter in his eyes, and the auctioneer, blandly elated, raised his voice, justifying his own judgment.
The picture, he said—as he had already informed the company, in fact—was a desirable one, a rare example of that peerless master Adrian Ostade; and the recent purchaser—whose property it was now become—had been persuaded generously to put it up to auction again on his own account, in answer to the representations of certain would-be bidders, whom an unforeseen delay on the railway had prevented from attending earlier.
“We will start at fifty pounds, gentlemen, if you please,” said he.