“Quite right,” said Matt, heartily.
Mrs. Lipchild thereupon produced a bottle of brandy and what she called a “seedy-cake” from a cupboard under a sideboard, and insisted on Matt’s partaking of the same. To refuse would pain her, to accept would refresh him, so he accepted. In the conversation which ensued it transpired that Mrs. Lipchild’s daughter was about to marry a young man from Brown Brothers (haberdashery department), that the young couple were now furnishing, and that it had occurred to Mrs. Lipchild that they might get their parlor pictures from Matt instead of from a shop, if they could get them any cheaper.
So Matt and his art patroness remounted again to the bedroom studio and haggled over prices, Mrs. Lipchild pointing out that his pictures were far inferior to shop pictures, not only by their unsympathetic subjects, but by their absence of frames and glass, and that she could get much bigger sizes than any of his for five shillings apiece. But as it came to be understood that ready money would not be required, and that the price was to be reckoned off the rent, Mrs. Lipchild ultimately departed in possession of a month’s worth of pictures—six of the prettiest landscapes and ladies in the collection, with Rapper’s “Library” thrown in. The poetic street-scenes she scorned, much to Matt’s relief, for he set no value on the earlier Nova Scotian work she had carried off.
This was Matt’s first sale of pictures in the great Metropolis of Art.
Considerably exhilarated by the change in his fortunes, and revived by the brandy and the “seedy-cake,” he reviewed the situation again, proof even against Billy’s letter, which he put by for later consideration. He found himself actually smiling, for a phrase of Cornpepper’s kept vibrating in his brain—“Art’s neither moral nor immoral, any more than it’s lunar or calendar.” Mrs. Lipchild’s last words had been: “Very well, we’ll reckon it a month,” and he wondered whimsically whether the month was to be lunar or calendar.
Under the impulse of these gayer sentiments, he resolved to raise money by pawning whatever he could part with, and by persisting in the search for an adventurous dealer; and reflecting that, after all, the tailor would be satisfied with an instalment, he wound himself up to the pitch of applying to Herbert by letter, though he could not bring himself to a verbal request.
My dear Herbert,—I am sorry to bother you again, but if you could let me have only five guineas to offer the tailor I should be very grateful. I hope soon to find work, or sell some things; and you will be pleased to hear that I have got over the difficulty with the rent—at least for the moment.
Yours sincerely,
Matt Strang.
P.S.—Don’t put yourself out if you cannot. You have been very kind to me, and I shall never forget it. I dare say I shall pull through somehow.”