Judy's heart sank. Forty cents for a box that cost at least ten dollars, counting the tubes of expensive colors! But she remembered that at a pawnbroker's you can redeem your belongings, so she decided to take the forty cents and send a telegram with it.
"There are some sketches in here that I should like to dispose of, too, but they are more valuable than the box," she added slyly, having an instinct that she must meet the old man on his own ground and cry up her wares. "Be careful! The paint is not quite dry on them."
She slid the panel with the Corot effect out of the back of the box and held it out to the ancient Shylock. He adjusted his horn spectacles on the end of his long nose and holding the sketch upside down, viewed it critically.
"Ah, very pretty, very pretty; two francs fifty for it; but I want to buy it, not to be redeemed. Any more?" and the dealer stretched out his eager hand.
Judy had two more which she got a franc apiece for, making in all six francs fifty, one dollar and thirty cents, enough to get her back to Paris traveling third class, since she already had her ticket from Versailles to Paris.
"I can't telegraph to Molly, though, I haven't enough money," she thought sorrowfully. "I hate to think how worried all of them will be. I should have told Frances about my predicament, but somehow I could not bring myself to ask a favor of her when I have always been so nasty to her."
The old pawnbroker could hardly wait for Judy to get out of his shop to begin his work on the sketches, converting them into perfectly good, authentic antiques. The Corot effect he put by a very hot fire, not quite hot enough to scorch it but hot enough to dry it very quickly and bake it, so it was covered with innumerable tiny cracks. Then he took some shellac, dissolved in alcohol and mixed with a little yellow ochre, and sprayed this all over the sketch. The result was remarkable. He then slipped it into a heavy gilt frame (still upside down), and displayed it in his window with the price mark: forty francs, without the frame.
Judy, feeling a little sad over her beloved sketching kit but jubilant over her financial success, started down the street and bumped right into Frances Andrews, who was eagerly searching for her. Judy made a sudden resolve to be nice to Frances from that time on. Frances spoke first:
"Miss Kean, I do not want to intrude on you, but I want you to feel that you can call on me to serve you in any way in my power. We are both of us Molly's friends and somehow I have a feeling that you need help of some sort."
"Frances—I am not going to call you Miss Andrews—I have been in a pickle but since I met you and your grandmother on the street I have come into a fortune of a dollar and thirty cents, so my troubles are about over. I am going to tell you all about it, but first I want to tell you that I am sorry I have been so rude and hateful and cold to you. I have been out in the country alone with my conscience all day and determined to be a nicer, sweeter girl and to apologize to you and to Molly; but I got on the train at Versailles going away from Paris instead of towards it, and landed here in Chartres with only six sous in my purse. When I met you on the street, I felt if I told you how sorry I was that I had been so studiedly mean, you would think I had a change of heart because I wanted something out of you; but now that I have earned enough to get back to Paris, you can't think that. You show yourself to be generous-hearted and kind by coming back to look me up after I was so unbearable to you and your grandmother. You have heaped coals of fire on my head."