“Well, my dear,” he said, “what do you suppose Sarah Anne came for?” And, in reply to her wondering gaze: “To buy me off from showing the pictures!”
His wife’s indignation took just the form he could have wished. She simply went on with her rich cooing laugh and hugged the baby tighter. But Lewis felt the perverse desire to lay a still greater strain upon her loyalty.
“Offered to double my allowance, she and John, if only I’ll take down the sign!”
“No one shall touch the sign!” Treeshy flamed.
“Not till I do,” said her husband grimly.
She turned about and scanned him with anxious eyes. “Lewis ... you?”
“Oh, my dear ... they’re right.... It can’t go on forever....” He went up to her, and put his arm about her and the child. “You’ve been braver than an army of heroes; but it won’t do. The expenses have been a good deal heavier than I was led to expect. And I ... I can’t raise a mortgage on the pictures. Nobody will touch them.”
She met this quickly. “No; I know. That was what Mary Adeline came about.”
The blood rushed angrily to Lewis’s temples. “Mary Adeline—how the devil did she hear of it?”
“Through Mr. Reedy, I suppose. But you must not be angry. She was kindness itself: she doesn’t want you to close the gallery, Lewis ... that is, not as long as you really continue to believe in it.... She and Donald Kent will lend us enough to go on with for a year longer. That is what she came to say.”