"Oh, I don't know what to say. Have you nothing to propose?"
"Only what I did. To cut it up and sell the faces as so many small canvases. That would partially repay me for the things he still owes for—the paints and so on. But I detest the thing so I hate to spread the misery of it."
"Repay you? Do you mean that you believe you have a right—you own that picture?"
"Certainly."
"Why, it is the labor of—it means many years out of my poor father's life. Can such a thing be 'owned' by anybody except him?"
"Yes, of course. Hark you. You go home and tell him what I offer. I will take the picture off his hands and allow him—hmm—maybe two hundred dollars; or, he can take it and owe me that much more. In any case I want to get rid of it. I won't have it left here much longer. I shall have other uses for this room, maybe. Anyway, I mean to get that off the place."
Amy moved slowly toward the door. She did not know how to reply, and she felt her cousin was a very hard, unjust man. Yet she agreed with him that the picture was enough to make a person wish it out of sight, even out of existence.
At the doorway he arrested her steps, by laying his hand upon her shoulder.
"Help me down; I'm afraid of stairs. And there's another thing—that donkey."