“Yes, half a dozen.  Not at your price, though, not old ones.  Here are two fairly good specimens,” and he handed them out and laid them on the glass before him.

The man leaned forward and peered into the case.

“That’s a picture of the Palisades, isn’t it?” He had ignored the fans.

“Yes, so I understand.”

“Oh, I knew it first time I put my eyes on it.  I’m in the real-estate business.  I’ve got a lot of cottage sites along that top edge.  Is it for sale?”

“It will be when it’s cleaned and varnished and I have it framed.”

“Belong to you?”

“No; it belongs to a man who has left it for sale.  He went out as you came in.”

“What does he want for it?”

“He would be satisfied with ten dollars, even less, because he needs the money.  I want fifty.”

“You want to make the rest?”

“No, it all goes to him.”

“Well, what do you stick it on for?”

“Because if it isn’t worth that, it isn’t worth anything.”

“Take it out and let me have a look at it.  Yes, just the spot.  That whitish streak and that little puff of steam is where they’re breaking stone.  Make a good advertisement, wouldn’t it, hanging up in your office?  You can show the owners just where the land lies, and you can show a customer just what he’s going to own.”

A brisk bargaining then followed, he determined to buy, and Felix to maintain his price.  Before the ten minutes were out, the bustling man had forgotten all about the fan he was in search of for his wife and, having assured himself that it was all oil-paint, every square inch of it, had propped it up against an ancient clock, standing back to see the effect, had haggled on five, then ten, then twenty-five, and had finally surrendered by laying five ten-dollar bills on the glass case.  After which he tucked the picture under his arm, and without a word of any kind disappeared through the street-door.

And that is why the note which Felix had promised to write Dogger was sent by messenger instead of by mail within five minutes after the picture and the buyer had disappeared.  And that is why, too, all the preliminary subterfuges were omitted, and the substitute contained the announcement which follows: 

“Dear Mr. Dogger: 

“I have just sold your Palisade picture for fifty dollars.  The amount is at your service whenever you call.  “Yours truly,
               “Felix O’Day.”

That, too, is why Dogger was so overjoyed that he beat the messenger back to Kling’s, skipping over the flag-stones most of the way till he reached the Dutchman’s door, where, as befitted a painter whose genius had at last been recognized, he slowed down, entering the store with a steady gait, a little restrained in his manner, saying, as he tried to cram down his joy, that it was a mere sketch, you know, something that he had knocked off out-of-doors; that Nat had liked it and had, so he said, taken it up to have it framed.  That, of course, he could not afford ever to repeat the sale price—­not for a ten by fourteen of that quality, but that most of his rich patrons were still out of town, and so it came in very well.