“Well, it’s a good deal like the photographs we had taken about a year before they died. It’s a good likeness. They say they don’t change a great deal, at first.”
She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment; but he answered wide of it:
“I came up here to paint your mountain, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Durgin—Lion’s Head, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. Well I don’t know as we could stop you, if you wanted to take it away.” A spare glimmer lighted up her face.
The painter rejoined in kind. “The town might have something to say, I suppose.”
“Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale in place of it. We’ve got mountains to spare.”
“Well, then, that’s arranged. What about a week’s board?”
“I guess you can stay, if you’re satisfied.”
“I’ll be satisfied if I can stay. How much do you want?”
The woman looked down, probably with an inward anxiety between the fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little. She said, tentatively, “Some of the folks that come over from the hotels say they pay as much as twenty dollars a week.”