He made notes of the chalk numbers marked on the backs of the picture-boards and then started for his office. Mrs. Fabian, with sinking heart, followed at his heels.
“If he looks up his records and finds they came from the old house of Paul Revere and his descendants, he will never sell them at a decent price,” thought she, impatiently.
She sat opposite the old man while he fumbled the pages of his book and slowly glanced down the entries, his bent fore-finger pointing to each item carefully as he read.
“Um! Here it is: Number 329, came from Sarah Dolan, who moved to a smaller flat last Spring. From this entry I see that all them seven pictures came from her. Do you happen to know her?”
Mr. Van Styne glanced up at his companion.
She shook her head, and he said, closing the book, “Why, Sally Dolan was cook fer the Revere boys, and when they broke up, she started a bordin’ house down on Morris Street. Then she took rheumatiz and was that crippled, she couldn’t get about the kitchen no more, so she gave up. Her boys manage to keep her now, and she takes things easy. But she sure was a good cook!”
Much as Mrs. Fabian would have liked to question the old man about the Revere boys she feared he might remember that the cook was given a lot of old pictures when the boys “broke up”, so she turned the subject adroitly.
“Well, I’ll go and see what the girls have found out there, I guess. But I wish you’d fix a price on those four frames.”
“Lem’me see, now. Sal Dolan didn’t set no price, and if I say five dollars for the four, would you take ’em?”
“Dear me!” objected Mrs. Fabian, craftily. “The large one you said was worth about a dollar-thirty, and the fish-picture a dollar. That leaves two dollars and seventy cents for the other two. Isn’t that pretty high for them?”