Chapter IX

That the memories of Masie's birthday party should have been revived again and again, and that the several incidents should have been discussed for days thereafter--every eye growing the brighter in the telling--was to have been expected. Kitty could talk of nothing else. The beauty of the room; the charm of Masie's costume; Kling's generosity; and last, O'Day's bearing and appearance as he led the child through the stately dance, looking, as Kitty expressed it, "that fine and handsome you would have thought he was a lord mayor," were now her daily topics of conversation.

Masie was equally enthusiastic, rushing down-stairs the next morning to throw her arms around his neck with an "Oh, Uncle Felix, I never, NEVER, NEVER was so happy in all my life!"

Kling was still more jubilant. The success of Masie's banquet room had established him at once among bric-a-brac dealers as a compet.i.tor quite out of the ordinary. His old customers came in flocks, walking about with gasps of astonishment. Before the week was out, a masonic lodge had bought the throne, a seaside resort the big Chinese lantern, and two of the four Spanish chairs had found a home in a millionaire's library.

Moreover--and this was all the more remarkable in view of his early training--a certain deference became apparent in the Dutchman's manner not only toward Felix but toward his customers. He no longer received them in his shirt-sleeves. He bought some new clothes and sported a collar, necktie, and hat, duplicating those worn by Felix as near as his memory served.

Still more remarkable were the changes wrought among the neighbors in their att.i.tude toward O'Day. Until then they had, in their independent fashion, treated him like any of the other men who came in and out their several stores, pleased with his interest in the business, but quickly forgetting him as they became reabsorbed in the affairs of the day. Now, as they told him what a good time they had had on the birthday, they raised their hats. Porterfield went so far as to tell the radiant Kitty that her boarder was a "Jim Dandy," and that if she should lay her hands on another to "trot him out."

Kitty of course had expected these triumphs, but that it was she who had made them possible, and that but for her own individual efforts Felix might still be wandering around the streets in search of bed and board, apparently never crossed her mind. He would have been just as splendid, she said to herself, and just as much of a man no matter who had helped and no matter where his feet had landed.

If O'Day were aware of the changes of public opinion going on around him, there was nothing in either his manner or in his speech to show it.

When they complimented him on the way in which he had utilized Otto's old stock, producing so wonderful an interior, he would remark quietly that it was nothing to his credit. He had always loved such things; that it came natural to some people to put things to rights, and that any one could have done as much. It was only when some one alluded to Masie that his face would light up. "Yes, charming, was she not? Such a wonderful little lady, and so good!"

That which did please him--please him immensely--was the outcome of a visit made some days after the party by old Nat Ganger.

"Regular Aladdin lamp," Nat shouted, slamming Kling's door behind him. "One rub, bang goes the rubbish, and up comes an Oriental palace.

Another rub and little devils swarm over the walls and ceilings and begin hanging up stuffs and lamps. Another rub, and before you can wink your eye, out steps a little princess, a million times prettier than any Cinderella that ever lived. Wonderful! WONDERFUL!

"Where is the darling child anyway. Can't I see her? I got away from Sam, telling him I was going to look up another frame for one of my pictures. Here it is. All a lie, every bit of it. It's Sam's picture.

Not mine. I wrapped it up so he wouldn't know, but I came to see that darling child all the same, for I've got a surprise for her. But first I want you to see this picture. Here, wait until I untie this string.

It's one of Sam's Hudson Rivery things. Palisades and a steamboat in the foreground, and an afternoon sky. Easy dodge, don't you see? Yellow sky and purple hill, and short streak for the steamboat and its wake, and a smear of white steam straggling behind. Sam does 'em as well as anybody.

Sometimes he puts in a pile or two in the foreground for a broken dock and a rowboat with a lone fisherman squatting on the hind seat. Then he asks five dollars more. Always get more you know for figures in a landscape."

He had unwrapped the canvas by this time, and was holding it to the light of the window that Felix might see it better.

Felix studied it carefully, even to the cramped signature in the corner, "Samuel Dogger, A. N. A."; and with an appreciative smile said: "Very good, I should say. Yes, very good."

"Good! It's really very bad, and you know it. So do I. But you're too much of a gentleman to say so. Can't be worse, really, but 'puttying up'

is down by the heels, and there hasn't been an old master from Flushing, Long Island, or Weehawken, New Jersey, lugged up our stairs for a month;--two months, really. We had one last week from a dealer down-town which turned out to be genuine after Sam had looked it over. And, of course, Sam wouldn't touch it and sent for the auctioneer and told him so. And the beggar made Sam hunt for the signature and Sam found it at the top of the canvas instead of at the bottom. One of the early Dutchmen Sam said it was. Some kind of a Beck or a Koven. And would you believe it, the very next day the fellow got a whacking price for it from a collector up in one of the side streets near the Park. So Sam has gone back to the early American school. This means that he's getting down to his last five-dollar bill, and I want to tell you that I'm not far from it myself. I'd have been dead broke if I hadn't sold two Fatimas. One in pink pants and the other a flying angel in summer clothes to fit an alcove in an up-town barroom over the cigar-stand.

"But my money isn't Sam's money," he went on without pausing, "and Sam won't touch a penny of it. Never does unless I fool him on the sly. And I've come up here to fool him now, and fool him bad. I want you to hold on to this bust--wait until I get it out of my pocket." Here he pulled out a small bronze, a head of Augustus, beautifully wrought.

"If you buy the picture, I'll throw in the ancient Roman," and he laid it on the counter.

"And I want you to write Sam a note, asking him if he can't look around for one of his masterpieces, something say ten by fourteen; wanted for a customer who only buys good things. That any little landscape with water in it will do. Remember, don't leave out the water. Then Sam will come thumping down-stairs with the note, and I'll be awfully astonished and we'll talk it over, and I'll pull this out from under a pile of stuff where I'll hide it as soon as I get home. Then I'll say: 'Well, I'm going up-town and have Mr. O'Day look at it, and maybe it will suit him, and that if it does, I'll make him pay fifty dollars for it.' How do you think that will work?"

Felix, who had been looking into the old fellow's eyes, reading his mind in their depths, seeing clear down into the heart beneath, now picked up the bronze and began pa.s.sing his hand over it.

"Very lovely," he said at last, "and a marvellous paten. Where did you get it?"

"Spoken like a gentleman and a man of honor, and this time you tell the truth. It's just what you say--marvellous. I swapped a twenty by thirty for it. Will you take it?"

Felix shook his head, a smile playing about his lips.

"I would if I wanted to be unfair. Here, take your bronze and leave the picture. I will find a frame for it, and have one of the men give it a coat of varnish."

"And you'll write the note?"

"Is that necessary?"

"Of COURSE, it's necessary. You don't know Sam. He's as cunning as a weasel and can get away before you know it. Got to fool him. I always do. Told him more lies in one minute this morning than a horse can trot.

Will you write the note?"

Felix laughed. "Yes, just as soon as you go."

"And you won't hold on to the bronze?"

"No, I won't hold on to the bronze."

"And you can get fifty dollars for this unexampled work of art? That, of course, is the ASKING price. Ten would do a whole lot of good."

"I cannot say positively, but I will try."

"All right. And now where's that darling child?"

A laugh rang out from the top of the stairs, the laugh of a child overjoyed at meeting some one she loves, followed by "do you mean me?"

"Of course, I mean you, Toddlekins. Come down here and let me give you a big hug. And I've got a message for you from that dried-up old fellow with the s.h.a.ggy head. He sent you his love--every bit of it, he said.

And he's found some more gewgaws he's going to bring up some day. Told me that, too."

Masie had reached the floor and was running toward him with her hands extended, Fudge springing in front.

The old painter caught her up in his arms, lifting her off her little feet, and as quickly setting her down, his eyes snapping, his whole face aglow. The joy bottled up in the child seemed to have swept through him like an electric current.

"And wasn't it a beautiful party?" she burst out when she found her breath. "And wasn't Uncle Felix good to make it all for me?" She had moved to O'Day's side and had slipped her hand in his.

"Yes, of course, it was," roared Ganger. "Why, old Sam Dogger was so excited when he went to bed, he didn't sleep a wink all night. He's thought of nothing else but parties ever since. He's getting up one for you. Told me so this morning."

The child's eyes dilated.

"What sort of a party?"

"Oh, a dandy party, but it's not going to be at night. It's going to be in the daytime. All out in the blessed sunshine and under the trees. And everybody is going to be invited--everybody who belongs."

The child's brow clouded. "Everybody who belongs? Why, can't Uncle Felix come?"

"Certainly, he can come. He 'belongs.'"

"And--Fudge?"