"But he paid his money for it and it's not right——"
"Of course—that's the only good thing he has done—paid for it so that it could get over here where I could just wallow in it. Get down here, you heathen, take off your shoes and bow three times to the floor and then feast your eyes. You think you've seen landscapes before, but you haven't. You've only seen fifty cents' worth of good canvas spoiled by ten cents' worth of paint. I put it that way, Samuel, because that's the only way you'll understand it. Look at it! Did you ever see such a sky? Why, it's like a slash of light across a mountain-pool! I tell you—Samuel—that's a masterpiece!"
While they were discussing the merits of the landscape and the demerits of the transaction there came a knock at the door and the Moneybags walked in. Before he opened his lips Jack had taken his measure. He was one of those connoisseurs who know it all. The town is full of them.
A short connoisseur with a red face—red in spots—close-clipped gray hair that stood up on his head like a polishing brush, gold eyeglasses attached to a wide black ribbon, and a scissored mustache. He was dressed in a faultlessly fitting serge suit enlivened by a nankeen waistcoat supporting a gold watch-chain. The fingers of one hand clutched a palm-leaf fan; the fingers of the other were extended toward Jack. He had known Jack's governor for years, and so a too formal introduction was unnecessary.
"Show me what you've got," he began, "the latest, understand. Wife wants something to hang over the sideboard. You've been doing some new things, I hear from Ruggles."
The tone of the request grated on Jack, who had risen to his feet the moment "His Finance" (as he insisted on calling him afterward to Sam) had opened the door. He felt instantly that the atmosphere of his sanctum had, to a certain extent, been polluted. But that Sam's eyes were upon him he would have denied point-blank that he had a single canvas of any kind for sale, and so closed the incident.
Sam saw the wavering look in his friend's face and started in to overhaul a rack of unframed pictures with their faces turned to the wall. These he placed one after the other on the ledge of the easel and immediately above the Monet, which still kept its place on the floor, its sunny face gazing up at the shopkeeper, his clerk, and bin customer.
"This the newest one you've got?" asked the millionnaire, in the same tone he would have used to his tailor, as he pointed to a picture of a strip of land between sea and sky—one of those uncertain landscapes that a man is righteously excused for hanging upside down.
"Yes," said Jack, with a grave face, "right off the ice."
Sam winced, but "His Finance" either did not hear it or supposed it was some art-slang common to such a place.