Mr. Mainwaring, at this, displayed the versatility of a quick-change artist. It was pretty well demonstrated that Peter was not impressed by the majestic attitude, and he yodelled and burst into a laugh.
“Well, well, my Peter,” he said, “you shall have it your own way. It was no pittance. I ought not to have called it a pittance—mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Pittance it is—let us distinguish, my dear—when I contrast it with the subsequent offer that has reached me, but at the time a thousand guineas seemed to me a very fair remuneration. I had been too modest about my value, it appears now. Ah, yes, but recognition is pleasant enough, and when the brush slips from my hand, and my spirit flies” (he made a circular motion of his arms as if swimming) “to join the mightier dead, the Mainwaring estate will be found not too inconsiderable to place beside the fortunes of the Wardours. But that will not, I hope, be for a long time yet,” he added, as the notion of picturing himself in front of some great canvas with the brush slipping from his nerveless hands, supported by Silvia and Peter, occurred to him with an almost ominous vividness.
“Quite,” said Peter in general acknowledgment of this magnificence. “There remains then one thing to settle, and that is the price at which you repurchase the cartoon of which Mrs. Wardour is the present possessor.”
Mr. Mainwaring did not for the moment see the bearing of this, and remained splendid.
“I should not dream of repaying her one penny less than what I received for it,” he said. “The full price, Peter: assure her of that.”
Peter thought it better to let another aspect of the case strike his father, without suggesting it, and was silent till Mr. Mainwaring spoke again.
“H’m. I see what you mean,” he said.
“I hoped you would, because really there doesn’t seem to be any reason why she should let you have for a thousand guineas a thing which is now indubitably hers, and which you will immediately sell for a considerably higher sum.”
Mr. Mainwaring began to regret that he had said quite so much about the utter impossibility of recapturing the fire of the original in a copy.
“You would be offering her, you must remember,” Peter added, “a pittance for her picture.”