"For twelve hundred."
"My dear father, you know, really, that won't do."
"Do you think it was foolish to pay the two hundred extra?"
Isaac gazed at him over his fine gold-rimmed spectacles; and as he gazed he kept drawing his beard slowly through one lean and meditative hand. It was thus that he grasped his son's argument and drew it to a point.
"Foolish? It was—Don't you see? We—we simply can't do it."
"Why, you said yourself we could go as far as four thousand five, or four thousand at the very least."
Keith looked steadily at his father, who was too deeply and solemnly absorbed to perceive the meaning of the look. "That was not quite what I said. I said—if we were not prepared to go so far, it was our duty to withdraw. I thought I had made that clear to you."
"You 'aven't made it clear to me why you're objecting to that two hundred now."
Isaac was beginning to feel that stupidity was now his refuge.
"I'm not objecting to your reckless extravagance, as you seem to think. I'm trying to suggest that twelve hundred is a ridiculously small offer for a collection which can't be worth less than four thousand."