"Gracious me! Why!" asked Mrs. Biddlecombe.
"Then he went into a regular fit, fell down, and as he fell grabbed the little table, and broke off one of its pretty spindle legs. When he come out of his fit, my agent said that the least thing a gentleman could do was to buy the table he’d spoiled. The old lady took a fiver as compensation, and jolly glad she was to get it. I sold that table to an American millionaire for one hundred and twenty-five—guineas!"
Mrs. Biddlecombe rose majestically. She saw that her son-in-law was laughing.
"Come, Susan, let us leave these _gentlemen_ to their wine."
Susan followed her out of the room. When the door was shut behind them, Quinney said:
"Old man, that yarn was a bit too thick for ’em. See?"
"One more glass of port," he replied, "and I’ll tell you another."
He told several; and when the men returned to the small drawing-room, Susan said timidly that her mother had gone back to Laburnum Row. Later, when she was alone with her husband, she asked a sharp question:
"Joe, dear, you wouldn’t have done what Mr. Tomlin did, would you?"
"About that table. Mother and I thought it was horrid of him to take advantage of a poor old lady."
"Look ye here, my girl, Tomlin is—well, Tomlin. Don’t you mix him up with me."
"But, Joe, you are mixed up with him—in business."
"Temporary arrangement, my pretty, nothing more."
He kissed her, murmuring, "Blessed little saint you are!"
Melchester was profoundly interested in the new premises, and the other dealers in genuine antiques went about, so Quinney affirmed, chattering with rage, and predicting ruin.
"They’ll be ruined," said Quinney, chuckling and rubbing his hands. "Nobody will buy their muck, and they know it."
He had very nice hands, with long slender fingers, manifestly fashioned to pick up egg-shell china. Also in spite of his accent, which time might reasonably be expected to improve, his voice held persuasive inflections, and the resonant _timbre_ of the enthusiast, likely to ring in the memories of too timid customers, the collectors who stare at bargains twice a day till they are snapped up by somebody else. Quinney despised these Laodiceans in his heart, but he told Susan that they did well enough to practise upon.