‘I have brought the block of your book-plate, sir,’ she said, ‘with a couple of impressions of it.’
He held out his hand for it without a word. She had produced a charming design, punning on his name. A ship lay on its side with its keel showing: in the foreground was a faun squatting on the sand reading: behind was a black sky with stars and a large moon. He knew it to be a charming piece of work, but his annoyance at himself clouded everything.
‘Yes, I see,’ he said. ‘What do you charge for it?’
‘Ten pounds,’ she said. ‘That will include a thousand copies.’
He looked at the block in silence for a moment. There did not seem to be much work on it: he could get a woodcut that size for half of the price. It was but three inches by two.
‘Ten pounds!’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t dream of giving more than seven for it. Even that would be a fancy price.’
He put the block down, laid the two impressions on the top of it, and turned over the leaves of his cheque-book in order to pay for the thing at once. But she picked up her work, and without a word began wrapping it up in the paper she had just taken off it. Already he knew he had made a blunder, and the blunder was the act of a cad. It had been his business to ask the price beforehand, if he wanted to know it, not to quarrel with it afterwards. But the cad in him had full possession just then.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, and glancing up he found that for once she was looking at him with contemptuous anger, held perfectly in control.
‘I am going to take my work away again, sir, as you do not care to pay the price I ask for it,’ she said.
‘Nonsense. Seven pounds is a very good price. I know the cost of woodcuts.’