"They'll be ruined," said Quinney, chuckling and rubbing his hands. "Nobody will buy their muck, and they know it."
He had very nice hands, with long slender fingers, manifestly fashioned to pick up egg-shell china. Also in spite of his accent, which time might reasonably be expected to improve, his voice held persuasive inflections, and the resonant timbre of the enthusiast, likely to ring in the memories of too timid customers, the collectors who stare at bargains twice a day till they are snapped up by somebody else. Quinney despised these Laodiceans in his heart, but he told Susan that they did well enough to practise upon.
"You want to get the patter," he told his wife, "and the best and quickest way is to turn loose on the think it overs. See?"
It had long been arranged between them that Susan was to help in the shop and acquire at first hand intimate knowledge of a complex business. Quinney summed up the art of selling stuff in a few pregnant words.
"Find out what they want, and don't be too keen to sell to 'em. Most men, my pretty, and nearly all the women go dotty over the things hardest to get. Our best stuff will sell itself, if we go slow. Old silver is getting scarcer every day."
Susan smiled at her Joe's words of wisdom. He continued fluently: "We've a lot to learn; something new every hour. And we shall make bloomin' errors, again and again. All dealers do. Tomlin was had to rights only last week over two Chippendale chairs; and he thinks he knows all about 'em. I've been done proper over that coffee-pot."
He showed her a massive silver coffee-pot with finely defined marks upon it.
"A genuine George II bit, Susie, and worth its weight in gold if it hadn't been tampered with by some fool later on. All that repoussé work is George IV, and I never knew it. The worst fake is the half-genuine ones."
"Gracious!" exclaimed his pupil.
"There are lots o' things I don't know, and don't understand, my girl; all the more reason to hold tight on to what I do know. And what I know I'll try to share with you, and what you know you'll try to share with me."