"Found something beautiful? I'd like to hear of his finding something useful!" The ice cracked a little more. "As for your mother's honesty, Blair, if you had waited a minute, I'd have told you that as soon as I found the idea was practical I handed it over to Kraas. I'm damn-fool honest, I suppose." But this time she did not laugh at her joke. Blair was instant with apologies; he had not meant—he had not intended—"Of course you would do the square thing," he declared.
"But you thought I wouldn't," she said. And while he was making polite exclamations, she changed the subject for something safer. She still tried to entertain him, but now she spoke wearily. "What do you suppose I read in the paper to-night? Some man in New York—named Maitland, curiously enough; 'picked up' an old master—that's how the paper put it; for $5,000. It appears it was considered 'cheap'! It was 14x18 inches. Inches, mind you, not feet! Well, Mr. Doestick's friends are not all dead yet. Sorry anybody of our name should do such a thing."
Nannie turned white enough to faint.
"Allow me to say," said Blair, tensely, "that an 'old master' might be cheap at five times that price!"
"I wouldn't give five thousand dollars for the greatest picture that was ever painted," his mother announced. Then, without an instant's warning, her face puckered into a furious sneeze. "God bless us!" she said, and blew her nose loudly. Blair jumped.
"I would give all I have in the world!" he said.
"Well," his mother said, ramming her grimy handkerchief into her pocket, "if it cost all you have in the world, it would certainly be cheap; for, so far as I know, you haven't anything." Alas! the ice had given way entirely.
Blair pushed Nannie's hand from his arm, and getting up, walked over to the marble-topped centre-table; he stood there slowly turning over the pages of The Poetesses of America, in rigid determination to hold his tongue. Mrs. Maitland's eyebrow began to rise; her fingers tightened on her hurrying needles until the nails were white. Nannie, looking from one to the other, trembled with apprehension. Then she made an excuse to take Blair to the other end of the room.
"Come and look at my drawing," she said; and added under her breath:
"Don't tell her!"
Blair shook his head. "I've got to, somehow." But when he came back and stood in front of his mother, his hands in his pockets, his shoulder lounging against the mantelpiece, he was apparently his careless self again. "Well," he said, gaily, "if I haven't anything of my own, it's your fault; you've been too generous to me!"