M. Duponnet and Mr. Thornton took the picture to the other side of the shop and conferred together. So low were their voices that neither Uncle Si nor June could hear a word of what passed between them. Times and again they held the canvas to the light. They laid it on a tallboys, and pored over it; they borrowed the microscope of one another and made great show of using it; and then finally Mr. Thornton crossed the floor and said to Uncle Si, who was handling a piece of Waterford glass with the most pensive unconcern: “What’s your price, Mr. Gedge?”
“Heh?” said the old man, as if emerging from a beautiful dream. “Price? You had better name one.”
Excitement at this point seemed to cause June’s heart to stop beating.
“The trouble is,” said Mr. Thornton, “our friend, M. Duponnet, is not quite convinced that it is a Van Roon.”
“But there’s the signature.”
“It seems to have been touched up a bit.”
“Not by me,” said S. Gedge Antiques, austerely.
“We don’t think that for a moment,” said Mr. Thornton, in a voice of honey. “But the signature is by no means so clear as it might be, and in the absence of a pedigree M. Duponnet does not feel justified in paying a big price.”
There was a pause while the old man indulged in a dramatic change of spectacles. And then he said rather sourly, in a tone that M. Duponnet could not fail to hear: “Pedigree or no pedigree, I shall have no difficulty in selling it. You know as well as I do, Mr. Thornton, that American buyers are in the market.”
“Quite so, Mr. Gedge,” said Mr. Thornton suavely. And then while Uncle Si glared at both gentlemen as if they had been caught with their hands in his pocket, they conferred again together. This time it was M. Duponnet who ended their discussion by saying: “Meester Gedge, name your figure!”