"You are very good, but there is not the slightest occasion to trouble you. I am my friend's agent in this sort of thing. I have been abroad a good deal, and have served my apprenticeship to art. I am an art critic, don't you know. Now, would you mind telling me, Miss Ward, how much your father expected to get from the dealers?"
"I don't know," returned Waveney, doubtfully. "There was no fixed price, was there, Mollie? Father told us that he would be content with ten pounds."
"My dear Miss Ward," returned Ingram, in a tone of strong remonstrance, "your father undervalues himself. Ten pounds for that work of art! Heaven forgive me all the fibs I am telling," he added, mentally, and then he cleared his throat. "I am no Jew, and must decline to drive a hard bargain. If Mr. Ward will let my friend have 'King Canute,' I shall be willing to pay, on his behalf, five-and-twenty pounds: I mean"—looking calmly at the girl's agitated face—"five-and-twenty guineas."
They were too overwhelmed with surprise and pleasure to answer him; and just at that moment—that supreme moment—they heard their father's latch-key.
Ingram described the little scene later on to a dear friend.
"It was Atalanta's race, don't you know. They both wanted to reach their father first; he was the golden apple, pro tem.
"The lame Miss Ward had long odds, but my little-friend of the omnibus beat her hollow. Can you fancy Titania coming down her ladder of cobwebs? Well, you should see Miss Ward number two, running downstairs—it would give you a notion of it. And there was the golden apple on the door-mat waiting for her."
"You are very absurd," returned his hearer, laughing, "but your description amuses me, so please go on."
"There is something very refreshing in such originality," he murmured, languidly. "I have an idea that Gwen would love those girls. Gwen is all for nature and reality. Conventionality might have suggested that it was hardly mannerly to leave a guest in an empty room, even for golden apples, but no such idea would have occurred to the Misses Ward. They even forgot that sound ascends, and that I could hear every word."
"Dear me, that was very awkward!" But the lady spoke maliciously.