Herne started as from a trance and said, “I beg your pardon.”
“I wanted to speak to you about it,” said Olive Ashley, “I was looking at a book in the library the other day, an illuminated book about St. Louis, I think; and there was a wonderful red used; a red vivid as if it were red-hot, and yet as delicate in its tint as a clear space in the sunset. Now I can’t get a colour like that anywhere.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Murrel in his easy-going way. “I reckon you can get pretty well anything nowadays if you know where to go.”
“You mean,” said Olive somewhat bitterly, “that you can get anything nowadays if you know how to pay for it.”
“I wonder,” said the librarian musing, “if I were to offer to pay for a Palaeo-Hittite palumon, now, I wonder whether it would be easy to obtain.”
“I don’t say that Selfridge actually puts it in the shop-window,” said Murrel, “but you’d probably find some other American millionaire somewhere, willing to do what he would call a trade with it.”
“Now look here, Douglas,” cried Olive with a certain fire, “I know you’re fond of bets and wagers and that sort of thing. I’ll show you the red colour I mean in the book, and you shall compare it yourself with the colours in my paint-box. And then you shall go out yourself and see whether you can buy me a cake of it.”
CHAPTER VII
“BLONDEL THE TROUBADOUR”
“Oh,” said Murrel rather blankly. “Oh, yes. . . . Anything to oblige.”