“Oh, it will be all right. But drop into the studio if you like. It will take me about a week, I suppose. I’m over on Ontario in that old studio building. You’ll know it by the way most of the bricks have fallen out of the building and are scattered over the sidewalk.” She smiled a slow wide smile. Her teeth were good but her mouth was too big, he thought. Nice big warm kind of smile, though. He found himself smiling, too, sociably. Then he became businesslike again. Very businesslike.
“How much do you—what is your—what would you expect to get for a drawing such as that?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars,” said Miss O’Mara.
“Nonsense.” He looked at her then. Perhaps that had been humour. But she was not smiling. “You mean fifteen hundred for a single drawing?”
“For that sort of thing, yes.”
“I’m afraid we can’t pay that, Miss O’Mara.”
Miss O’Mara stood up. “That is my price.” She was not at all embarrassed. He realized that he had never seen such effortless composure. It was he who was fumbling with the objects on his flat-topped desk—a pen, a sheet of paper, a blotter. “Good-bye, Mr. DeJong.” She held out a friendly hand. He took it. Her hair was gold—dull gold, not bright—and coiled in a single great knot at the back of her head, low. He took her hand. The tired eyes looked up at him.
“Well, if that’s your price, Miss O’Mara. I wasn’t prepared to pay any such—but of course I suppose you top-notchers do get crazy prices for your work.”
“Not any crazier than the prices you top-notchers get.”
“Still, fifteen hundred dollars is quite a lot of money.”