“No, no. As sure as you and I sit here, only one hand painted that little thing of ours.”
“Then why should Uncle Si declare that it doesn’t in the least resemble a Van Roon?”
“Ah, that I don’t know. It is very strange that he should be so blind to the truth. As I say, it is the first time I have known it to happen.”
“It may be,” said June, “that this is the first time there has been so much money in the case.”
William dissented gravely. “The master would never let money influence him in a matter of this kind.”
“Uncle Si lets money influence him in matters of every kind.”
William shook his head. “I am afraid you don’t quite understand the master,” he said, with a wonderful look in his deep eyes.
June was too wise to contest the point. He might know more about pictures than did she, but when it came to human nature it was another pair of shoes. It made her quite hot with anger to feel how easily he could be taken in.
Sitting by William’s side on the edge of the sofa she made a vow. From now on it should be her aim in life to see that Uncle Si did not get the better of this young man. She had made a good and wise beginning by inducing him to bestow the picture upon herself, instead of giving it, as so easily might have happened, to the Old Crocodile. She knew that some bad quarters of an hour lay ahead, in the course of which she and her box might easily find themselves in the street; but come what might, let her cherish that picture as if it were life itself. For she saw with a startling clearness that William’s future, and perhaps her own, was bound up in its fortunes.
This surmise as to trouble ahead was borne out very exactly by events. When accompanied by William she returned to tea in a state as near positive happiness as she had ever known, Uncle Si’s aspect was so hostile that it would not have been surprising had she been sent packing there and then. The presence of William helped to restrain the anger of S. Gedge Antiques, since there was more to lose than to gain just now by fixing a quarrel upon him; but it was clear that the old man did not intend to pass over the incident lightly.