In a moment he had rushed into the shop. A fierce discussion ensued with the bespectacled Jew, who began a recital starting at Herculaneum B.C., but was interrupted in the Italian Renaissance by Marsh, who calmly offered him half what he asked. They haggled and scorned each other while John wondered which traced his ancestry to Judæa; then Marsh conquered at his original bid. They bore it home, swaddled in _The Times_, to John's room. John protested, he could not let Marsh pay so much for a present, but all his protests were over-ruled. "Of course you must have it--and offer libations to your great ancestor. What a leg he's got--he could do with more meat on his torso and less on his toes, while you could--" "Don't be rude," interrupted John. "It was a trick of the Phidian period of sculpture to lengthen the tibia to ensure--" on went the dissertation. Mid-way through a comparison of Michael Angelo with Benvenuto Cellini, there was a sudden explosion. "The old devil!" cried Marsh, looking closely at the statue. "He's swindled us--it's cracked over the thigh--look!" John looked. There was a fissure in the bronze about an inch long. "An appendicitis operation," said John. "I'll take it back," cried Marsh indignantly. "Don't--I like the lad better for his imperfections--he's more human." So the statue remained, raising its finger in a listening attitude on the bookshelf, recalling with an antique grace an artist's triumph in a dead civilisation. It revived, indeed, a pagan creed in the Perdie household. True, Mrs. Perdie was shocked by "that 'eathen thing without its coverings," and Annie simpered whenever she swept the feather brush over it, but Miss Simpson's eyes watered when she saw it, for she recalled how her dear brother, the Governor, had shown it to her in the museum at Naples--"when I was quite a girl, and Lieutenant Ranson, a charming young gentleman, was going to buy me a copy, but--" John had seen his portrait on her table, and had looked silently at the laughing face of the lover, drowned a week after it was taken. Wellington and de Courtrai borrowed "Narcissus" for a tea party they gave, with great success, to a crowd of ladies and gentlemen from the theatre.