Irish -- United States -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Runaway wives -- Fiction
One morning in June when they were busy over a lot of small curios,
arranging bits of jade, odd silver watches, seals, and pinchbeck rings,
in a glass case that had been cleaned and revarnished, the door
opened and an old fellow strolled in--an odd-looking old fellow, with
snow-white hair and beard, wearing a black sombrero and a shirt cut very
low in the neck. But for a pair of kindly eyes, which looked out at you
from beneath the brim of the hat, he might have been mistaken for one
of the dwarfs in “Rip Van Winkle.” Fudge, having now been disciplined by
Felix, only sniffed at his trousers.
“I see an old gold frame in your window,” began the new customer. “Might
I measure it?”
“Which one, sir?” replied Felix. “There are half a dozen of them, I
believe.”
“Well; will you please come outside? And I will point it out. It is the
Florentine, there in the corner--perhaps a reproduction, but it looks to
me like the real thing.”
“It is a Florentine,” answered Felix. “There are two or three pictures
in the Uffizi with similar frames, if I recall them aright. Would you
like a look at it?”
“I don't want to trouble you to take it out,” said the old man
apologetically. “It might not do, and I can't afford to pay much for
it anyway. But I would like to measure it; I've got an Academy picture
which I think will just fit it, but you can't always tell. No, I
guess I'll let it go. It's all covered up, and you would have to move
everything to reach it.”
“No, I won't have to move a thing. Here, you bunch of sunshine! Squeeze
in there, Masie, dear, and let me know how wide and high that frame
is--the one next the glass. Take this rule.”
The child caught up the rule and, followed by Fudge, who liked nothing
so well as rummaging, crept among the jars, mirrors, and candelabra
crowding the window, her steps as true as those of a kitten. “Twenty
inches by thirty-one--no, thirty,” she laughed back, tucking her little
skirts closer to her shapely limbs so as to clear a tiny table set out
with cups and saucers.
“You're sure it's thirty?” repeated the painter.
“Yes, sir, thirty,” and she crept back and laid the rule in O'Day's
hand.
“Thank you, my dear young lady,” bowed the old gnome. “It is a pleasure
to be served by one so obliging and bright. And I am glad to tell you,”
he added, turning to O'Day, “that it's a fit--an exact fit. I thought
I was about right. I carry things in my eye. I bought a head once in
Venice, about a foot square, and in Spain three months afterward, on my
way down the hill leading from the Alhambra to the town, there on a wall
outside a bric-a-brac shop hung a frame which I bought for ten francs,
and when I got to Paris and put them together, I'll be hanged if they
didn't fit as if they had been made for each other.”
“And I know the shop!” broke out Felix, to Masie's astonishment. “It's
just before you get to the small chapel on the left.”
“By cracky, you're right! How long since you were there?”
“Oh, some five years now.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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