"A cracking price," he kept repeating to himself, "a cracking price, eh? and out of old Peter Fish! Went fishing for minnows and hooked a whale, and another little fish for me! I wonder what she baited her hook with. That woman's a genius." Suddenly he caught sight of the sign of a Long Island florist set up in an apothecary's window between the big green and red glass globes that lined its sides. Turning on his heel he entered the door. "Pick me out a dozen red japonicas," he said to the boy behind the counter. Oliver waited until each short-stemmed blossom was carefully selected, laid on its bed of raw cotton, blanketed with the same covering, and packed in a paper box. Then, taking a card from his pocket, he wrote upon its back: "Most grateful thanks for my share of the catch," slipped it into an envelope, addressed it to "The fair Fisher, The Countess Kovalski," and, with a grim smile on his face, kept on down Broadway toward the dingy hotel, the resort of all the Southerners of the time, to arrange for rooms for his father and Nathan Gill. Having, with his card and his japonicas, dismissed the Countess from his mind, and to a certain extent his obligations, the full importance of this new order of Peter Fish's began to take possession of him. The color rose in his cheeks and an old-time spring and lightness came into his steps. He knew that such a commission, and from such a man, would at once gain for him a recognition from art patrons and a standing among the dealers. Lasting success was now assured him in the line he had chosen for his life's work. It only remained for him to do the best that was in him. Better than all, it had come to him unasked and without any compromising effort on his own part. He knew the connoisseur's collection. It filled the large gallery adjoining his extensive home on Washington Square and was not only the best in the city, containing as it did examples of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Chrome, Sully, and many of the modern French school--among them two fine Courbets and a Rousseau--but it had lately been enriched by one or more important American landscapes, notably Sanford Gifford's "Catskill Gorge" and Church's "Tropics"--two canvases which had attracted more than usual attention at the Spring Exhibition of the Academy. An order, therefore, for a family portrait from so distinguished a patron not only gave weight and dignity to the work of any painter he might select, but it would unquestionably influence his many friends and acquaintances to go and do likewise.