“Nothing doing,” replied R. P. Burns, M.D., with, however, a smile which belied his words. “I want a present for a sick baby I’m going to fix up in the morning. One of those painted Russian things of yours—the last boy went crazy over ’em. No time for antiques.”
“This isn’t an antique—it’s the last word from the front, and you’ll go crazy over it,” replied Miss Ray. Nevertheless she left the roll and went to a corner in the back of the shop given over to all sorts of foreign made and fascinating wooden toys. She selected a bear with a wide smile and feet which walked, and a gay-hued parrot on a stick, and took them to the big man who was waiting, like Mercury, poised on an impatient foot. While he counted out the change she slipped over to her roll of heavy papers, took out one, and when he looked up again it was straight into a great French war poster held at the length of Jane’s extended arms. He stared hard at it, and well he might, for it was by one of the most famous of French artists, whose imagination had been flaming with the vision of the desperate day.
“Well, by Joe!” Burns ejaculated, his hurry forgot. “I say——”
The poster’s owner waited quietly, lost to view behind the big sheet. Burns studied every detail of the picture, losing no suggestion indicated by the clever lines of the inspired pencil. It was only a rough sketch, impressionistic to the last degree, yet holding unspoken volumes in each bold outline. Then he drew a deep breath.
“Where did you get it?” he asked, as Jane lowered the poster. His eye went back to the roll lying half opened on a mahogany table near by.
“They were sent over by an officer I know—straight from Paris. That isn’t the most wonderful one by half, but I want you to see the rest when you’re not so rushed for time.”
“I’m not particularly rushed,” replied Burns, with a grin. “At least, I can stop if you’ve any more like this. I have to tear in and out of your place, you know, because there’s always some idiot lurking behind one of your screens to leap out and ask me searching questions about patients. If you’ll bar your doors to the public some day, I’ll come and spend an hour gazing at your stuff. Let’s see the posters, please.”
Jane spread them out, one after another, till half the shop was covered. Burns walked from poster to poster, intent, frowning with interest, his quick intelligence recognizing the extraordinary impressions he was getting, his own imagination firing under the stimulus of an art at its marvellous best. Before one of the smaller posters he lingered longest—a wash drawing in colour of a poilu holding his child in his arms, with its mother looking into his face.
“He’s just a kid, that fellow,” he said, in a smothered tone, “just a kid, but he’s giving ’em both up. He won’t come back—somehow you know that. And—it doesn’t seem to matter, if he helps save his country. See here—you ought to do something with these. If the people of this town could see them, a few more of them might wake up to the idea that there’s a war on somewhere.”
“As soon as some English ones come I’ve sent for I intend to have an exhibition, here in my shop, and sell them—for the benefit of French and Belgian orphans. I expect to get all kinds of prices. Will you auction them off for me?”