"Nonsense! Don't be foolish, man. I tell you I'm glad to do it. It'll be worth it to me—the rarity of the case—"
"How much—would it cost?" interposed Daniel Burton peremptorily, with an unsteadiness of voice that the doctor did not fail to read aright.
"Why, man, alive, it would cost—" With his eyes on Daniel Burton's sternly controlled face, the doctor came to an abrupt pause. Then, turning, he began to tramp up and down the room angrily. "Oh, hang it all, man, why can't you be sensible? I tell you I don't want any—" Once again his tongue stopped. His feet, also, had come to an abrupt pause. He was standing before an old colonial mirror. Then suddenly he wheeled about. "By Jove, there IS something I want. If you'll sell me two or three of these treasures of yours here, you will be more than cancelling your debt, and—"
"Thank you," interrupted the other coldly, but with a still deeper red staining his face. "As I happen to know of the unsalability of these pictures, however, I cannot accept your generosity there, either."
"Pictures!" The doctor, turning puzzled eyes back to the mirror, saw now that a large oil painting hung beside it on the wall. "I wasn't talking about your pictures, man," he scoffed then. "I was looking at that mirror there, and I'd like the highboy downstairs, if I could persuade you to part with them, and—WOULD you be willing to part with them?"
"What do you think!" (So marvelous was the change, and so great was the shining glory in Daniel Burton's face, that the doctor caught himself actually blinking.) "Do you think there's anything, ANYTHING that I wouldn't part with, if I thought I could give that boy a chance? Make your own selection, doctor. I only hope you'll want—really WANT—enough of them to amount to something."
The doctor threw a keen glance into his face.
"Amount to something! Don't you know the value of these things here?"
Daniel Burton laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I suppose they are—valuable. But I shall have to confess I DON'T know very much about it. They're very old, I can vouch for that."
"Old! Humph!" The doctor was close to the mirror now, examining it with the appreciative eyes of the real lover of the antique. "I should say they were. Jove, that's a beauty! And I've got just the place that's hungering for it."