His customer nodded contentedly.
"She has remarkable talent—remarkable! The choice of subject alone shows that; so strong, so original. All the same, I can't give you that sum for it. It's ridiculous. You just take off two-fifty, and then we can talk about it."
The shopman's face was a study, as he looked back at his interlocutor. He had known Mr. Burton for twenty-five years, and had never seen him intoxicated yet, but what was he talking about now?
"Two-fifty?" he repeated blankly.
"Yes!" returned the other testily, thinking he was pondering discontentedly over the demanded reduction, "I say two-fifty. You must know, as well as I do, that five hundred is a fancy price for a water-colour. However I'll stand that; it's a big picture, and something quite exceptional, so I'll go five hundred, especially as the lady is eighteen and attractive. But not any more, and if you refuse that, you're a fool, Jim!"
Jim looked down at his glass counter, struggling with his amazement, and it did credit to his good qualities as a trader that his face presented nothing more than the surly and sour look of one who is asked to reduce his price for a valuable object. Rapidly, he tried to grasp the position, and, though he could not find at once the key to it, he saw that there was some error somewhere, which had induced Burton to make him an offer of five hundred pounds for a picture priced at seventy-five. It was clearly his duty to get for the artist the most that anyone was willing to pay for the painting. It was even more his duty to secure the largest possible commission for himself.
Here, if anywhere, the law of caveat emptor must apply. Burton had seen the picture, Burton was a connoisseur, if Burton said it was worth five hundred that settled it; it was worth it. The vocation of picture-dealing lends a mask to the face and adroitness to the mind.
Jim looked up with a depressed air.
"The lady fixed the price herself, sir.... I don't know whether I ought to...."
Burton interrupted him: "Fiddlesticks! Fiddlesticks! I'll write you a cheque for five hundred pounds, and you send it to the lady with my compliments, not only on her painting, but on her cheek in asking so much for it. Say if she's not satisfied, she can return the cheque and have her picture back." And he drew out a cheque-book and laid it on the counter. Jim, inwardly trembling lest at any moment Regina or Everest should come in and in some way spoil this amazing bargain, still moved slowly to fetch pen and ink, and put it before his customer with the grudging air of a man who hates the concession he is making.