S. Gedge Antiques solemnly exchanged his “selling” spectacles for his “buying” ones, screwed up his eyes and grunted: “Why, that’s the tail of a Q, you fool.” Again he took up the microscope and made prodigious play with it. “That’s if it’s anything. Which I take leave to doubt.”
William, however, was not to be moved. And then Uncle Si’s manner had a bad relapse. He began to bully. William, all the same, stuck to his guns with a gentle persistence that June could only admire. This odd but charming fellow would have Van Roon, or he would have none.
At last the old man laid the microscope on the supper table, and there came into his cunning, greedy eyes what June called the “old crocodile” look. “If you’ll take my advice, boy, you’ll turn that R into an A, and you’ll make that upstroke a bit longer, so that it can stand for an H, and you’ll touch up those blurs in the middle, so that ordinary common people will really be able to see that it is a Hobbema. Now what do you say?”
William shook a silent, rather mournful, head.
“If you’ll do that, you shall have five pounds for it. That’s big money for a daub for which you paid five shillings, but Mr. Thornton says American buyers are in the market, and with Hobbemas in short supply, they might fall for a thing like this. But of course the job must be done well.”
William was still silent.
“Now what do you say, boy?” The Old Crocodile was unable to conceal his eagerness. “Shall we say five pounds as it stands? We’ll leave out the question of the signature. Mr. Thornton shall deal with that. Now what do you say? Five pounds for it now?”
William did not speak. It was at the tip of June’s tongue to relieve his embarrassment by claiming the picture as her own; but, luckily, she remembered that to do so just now might have an effect opposite to the one intended. Even as it was, she could not refrain from making a “mouth” at William to tell him to stand firm.
He saw the “mouth,” but unfortunately so did Uncle Si. There were few things escaped the old man when he happened to be wearing his “buying” spectacles.
“Niece, you cut off to bed,” he said sternly. “And you must learn not to butt in, or one of these days you’ll bite granite.”