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“Give him five lire, Mr. Williams.”

Poor Uncle Ezra fumbled in his pocket-book for the piece of money. He had never bribed in his life. It was a terrible moral fall, to see him tremblingly offer the piece of scrip. The man refused, “positive orders, permesso necessary,” etc., etc. The bell rang; there was a rush. Uncle Ezra looked unhappy.

“Here,” Watkins shouted, grabbing the precious pictures in a manner far from reverent, “I’ll send these on, Mr. Williams; run for your train.” Uncle Ezra gave one undecided glance, and then yielded. “You will look after them,” he pleaded, “carefully.”

“You shall have them safe enough,” my wife promised.

“Blast the pasteboards,” Watkins put in under his breath, “the best thing to do with them is to chop ’em up.” He was swinging them back and forth under his arm. My wife took them firmly from him. “He shall have his pictures, and not from your ribald hands.”

A week later Rome became suddenly oppressively warm. We started off for Venice, Watkins tagging on incorrigibly. “I want to see ‘Maud,'” he explained. The pictures had been packed and sent ahead by express. “The storm must have burst, tears shed, tempers cooled, mortification set in,” I remarked, as we were being shoved up the Grand Canal toward the Palazzo Palladio. “There they are in the balcony,” my wife exclaimed, “waving to us. Something is up; Maudie is hanging back, with Aunt Mary, and Professor Painter is at the other end, with Uncle Ezra.”

The first thing that caught the eye after the flurry of greetings was the impudent blue and red of Uncle Ezra’s “Sancta Conversazione,” Domenico Tintoretto, Savoldo, or what not; St. Agnes’s leg and all, beaming at us from the wall. The other two were not there. My wife looked at me. Maudie was making herself very gracious with little Watkins. Painter’s solemn face began to lower more and more. Aunt Mary and Uncle Ezra industriously poured oil by the bucket upon the social sea.

At last Maud rose: “You must take me over there at once, Mr. Watkins. It will be such an enjoyment to have someone who really knows about pictures and has taste.” This shot at poor Painter; then to my wife, “Come, Jane, you will like to see your room.”

Painter crossed to me and suggested, lugubriously, a cigar on the balcony. He smoked a few minutes in gloomy silence.

“Does that fellow know anything?” he emitted at last, jerking his head at Watkins, who was pouring out information at Uncle Ezra. I began gently to give Charles Henderson Watkins a fair reputation for intelligence. “I mean anything about art? Of course it doesn’t matter what he says about my picture, whether it is a copy or not, but Miss Vantweekle takes it very hard about hers. She blames me for having been with her when she bought it, and having advised her and encouraged her to put six hundred dollars into it.”

“Six hundred,” I gasped.

“Cheap for a Bonifazio, or a Titian, as we thought it.”

“Too cheap,” I murmured.

“Well, I got bitten for about the same on my own account. I sha’n’t get that Rachel’s library at Berlin, that’s all. The next time you catch me fooling in a subject where I don’t know my bearings–like fine art–You see Mr. Williams found my picture one day when he was nosing about at an antichita’s, and thought it very fine. I admire Mr. Williams tremendously, and I valued his opinion about art subjects much more then than I do now. He and Mrs. Williams were wild over it. They had just bought their picture, and they wanted us each to have one. They have lots of sentiment, you know.”

“Lots,” I assented.

“Mrs. Williams got at me, and well, she made me feel that it would bring me nearer to Miss Vantweekle. You know she goes in for art, and she used to be impatient with me because I couldn’t appreciate. I was dumb when she walked me up to some old Madonna, and the others would go on at a great rate. Well, in a word, I bought it for my education, and I guess I have got it!