“They won’t sell? You offered them my price?”
“It struck them as prodigious, but they were not tempted.”
“I’ve got to have it somehow. With this land added to theirs I should have the finest place on the shore.”
The broker disregarded this flamboyant remark, which was merely a repetition of what he had heard several times already. “I warned you,” he said, “that they might possibly refuse even this munificent offer. They told me to tell you that if it was worth so much they could not afford to sell.”
“Is it not enough? They’re poor, you told me—poor as church mice.”
“Compared with you. But they have enough to live on simply, and—and to be able to maintain such an establishment as yours, for instance, would not add in the least degree to their happiness. On the contrary, it is because they delight in the view and the woods and their little garden just as they see them that they can’t afford to let you have the place.” Now that the chances of a commission were slipping away David Walker was not averse to convey in delicate language the truth which Miss Rebecca had set forth.
Mr. Anderson felt his chin meditatively. “I seem to be up against it,” he murmured. “You think they are not holding out for a higher figure?” he asked shrewdly.
David shook his head. Yet he added, with the instinct of a business man ready to nurse a forlorn hope, “There would be no harm in trying. I don’t believe, though, that you have the ghost of a chance.”
The furniture king reflected a moment. “I’ll walk down there this afternoon and make their acquaintance.”
“A good idea,” said Walker, contented to shift the responsibility of a second offer. “You’ll find them charming—real thoroughbreds,” he saw fit to add.