“You see,” said Mrs. Montgomery, “you can't help laughing at it. The man that made it has humor, and he has art and—and untrammeled vision, and really the most wonderful technique.”
Peter Lane and the technique of a jack-knife!
The ladies of the Baptist Aid Society were too surprised to gasp. The enthusiasm of Mrs. Montgomery took their breath away, and Mrs. Montgomery was not loth to speak still more, with a discoverer's natural pride in her discovery. She examined one toy after another, and her enthusiasm grew, and infected the other women. They, too, began to see the charm of Peter's handiwork and to glimpse what Mrs. Montgomery had seen clearly: that the toys were the result of a frank, humorous, boyish imagination combined with a man's masterly sureness of touch. Here was no jig-saw, paper-patterned, conventional German or French slopshop toy, daubed over with ill-smelling paint. She tried to tell the ladies this, and being in New York the president of several important art and literary and musical societies, she succeeded.
“We must ask twenty-five cents apiece for them,” said Mrs. Ferguson.
“Oh! twenty-five cents! A dollar at least,” said Mrs. Montgomery. “The work of an artist. Don't you see it is not the intrinsic value but the art the people will pay for?”
“But do you think Riverbank will pay a dollar for art?” asked Mrs. Vandyne.
Mrs. Montgomery glanced over the toys. “I will pay a dollar apiece for all of them, and be glad to get them,” she said. “I feel—I feel as if this alone made my trip to Riverbank worth while. You have no idea what it will mean to go home and take with me anything so new and unconventional. I shall be famous, I assure you, as the discoverer of—”
“His name is Peter Lane,” said Mrs. Vandyne. “He is one of the shanty-boatmen that live on the river. A little, mildly-blue-eyed man; a sort of hermit. They call him the Jack-knife Man, because he whittles wooden spoons and peddles them.”
“Oh, he will be a success!” cried Mrs. Montgomery. “Even his name is delicious. Peter Lane! Isn't it old-fashioned and charming? Peter Lane, the Jack-knife Man! How many of these toys may I have, Anna?”
“I want one!” said Mrs. Wilcox promptly, and before the ladies were through, Mrs. Montgomery had to insist that she be permitted to claim two of the toys by her right as discoverer.