"Oh----" and a look of disappointment and dismay.
"You don't want it?" he would ask eagerly.
"No--I can't pay as much as that."
Then the smile would creep back again into his eyes.
"Of course--it's a beautiful thing," he would say clumsily--"a beautiful thing."
And when he went home, he would tell the little old white-haired lady how much it had been admired, and they would call back to memory the day when they had bought it--so long ago that it seemed as though they were quite young people then.
So it fell out that this old gentleman of the curio shop in the Merceria came to be known for his seeming eccentricities. People talked of him. They told amusing stories of his strange methods of doing business.
"Do you know the Treasure Shop in the Merceria," they said over the dinner tables in London when they wanted to show how intimately they knew their Europe. "The old man who owns that--there's a character for you!" They even grew to making up anecdotes about him, to show how keenly observant they were when abroad. Everyone, even Smelfungus and Mundungus, would be thought sentimental travellers if they could.
It was the most natural coincidence in the world then, that John, strolling aimlessly in the arcades of the Square of St. Mark's that morning after he had left his mother, should overhear a conversation in which the eccentric old gentleman in the Merceria was introduced.
Outside Lavena's two women were taking coffee, as all well-cultured travellers do.