"Have you seen Uncle Ezra?" my wife asked, anxiously.

"No. Three telegrams. Train was delayed--I suppose by the importance of the works of art it's bringing on."

"When do you expect him?"

"About noon."

"Mr. Watkins," my wife flamed out, "I believe you are just shirking it, to meet that poor old man with his pictures. You ought to have been at the station, or at least at the hotel. Why, it's twelve now!"

Watkins hung his head.

"I believe you are a coward," my wife went on. "Just think of his arriving there, all excitement over his pictures, and finding you gone!"

"Well, well," I said, soothingly, "it's no use to trot off now, Watkins; stay to breakfast. He will be in shortly. When he finds you are out at the hotel he will come straight on here, I am willing to bet."

Watkins looked relieved at my suggestion.

"I believe you meant to run away all along," my wife continued, severely, "and to come here for refuge."

Watkins sulked.

We waited in suspense, straining our ears to hear the sound of a cab stopping in the street. At last one did pull up. My wife made no pretence of indifference, but hurried to the window.

"It's Uncle Ezra, with a big, black bundle. John, run down--No! there's a facchino."

We looked at each other and laughed.

"The three!"

Our patron of art came in, with a warm, gentle smile, his tall, thin figure a little bent with the fatigue of the journey, his beard a little grayer and dustier than usual, and his hands all a-tremble with nervous impatience and excitement. He had never been as tremulous before an opinion from the Supreme Court. My wife began to purr over him soothingly; Watkins looked sheepish; I hurried them all off to breakfast.

The omelette was not half eaten before Uncle Ezra jumped up, and began unstrapping the oil-cloth covering to the pictures. There was consternation at the table. My wife endeavored soothingly to bring Uncle Ezra's interest back to breakfast, but he was not to be fooled.

My Uncle Ezra was a courageous man.

"Of course you fellows," he said, smiling at Watkins, in his suave fashion, "are just whetting your knives for me, I know. That's right. I want to know the worst, the hardest things you can say. You can't destroy the intrinsic _worth_ of the pictures for us; I have lived with mine too long, and know how precious it is!"

At last the three pictures were tipped up against the wall, and the Madonnas and saints in gold, red, and blue were beaming out insipidly at us. Uncle Ezra affected indifference. Watkins continued with the omelette. "We'll look them over after breakfast," he said, severely, thus getting us out of the hole temporarily.

After breakfast my wife cooked up some engagement, and hurried me off.

We left Uncle Ezra in the hands of the physician. Two hours later, when we entered, the operation had been performed--we could see at a glance--and in a b.l.o.o.d.y fashion. The pictures were lying about the vast room as if they had been spat at. Uncle Ezra smiled wanly at us, with the courage of the patient who is a sceptic about physicians.

"Just what I expected," he said, briskly, to relieve Watkins, who was smoking, with the air of a man who has finished his job and is now cooling off. "Mr. Watkins thinks Painter's picture and Maud's are copies, Painter's done a few years ago and Maud's a little older, the last century. My Savoldo he finds older, but repainted. You said cinque cento, Mr. Watkins?"

"Perhaps, Mr. Williams," Watkins answered, and added, much as a dog would give a final shake to the bird, "_Much_ repainted, hardly anything left of the original. There may be a Savoldo underneath, but you don't see it." Watkins smiled at us knowingly. My wife snubbed him.

"Of course, Uncle Ezra, _that's_ one man's opinion. I certainly should not put much faith in one critic, no matter how eminent he may be. Just look at the guide-books and see how the 'authorities' swear at one another. Ruskin says every man is a fool who can't appreciate his particular love, and Burckhardt calls it a daub, and Eastlake insipid.

Now, there are a set of young fellows who think they know all about paint and who painted what. They're renaming all the great masterpieces. Pretty soon they will discover that some tenth-rate fellow painted the Sistine Chapel."

Watkins put on an aggrieved and expostulatory manner. Uncle Ezra cut in.

"Oh! my dear! Mr. Watkins may be right, quite right. It's his business to know, I am sure, and I antic.i.p.ated all that he would say; indeed, I have come off rather better than I expected. There is old paint in it somewhere."

"Pretty far down," Watkins muttered. My wife bristled up, but Uncle Ezra a.s.sumed his most superb calm.

"It makes no difference to me, of course, as far as the _worth_ of the work of art is concerned. I made up my mind before I came here that my picture was worth a great deal to me, much more than I paid for it."

There was a heroic gasp. Watkins interposed mercilessly, "And may I ask, Mr. Williams, what you did give for it?"

Uncle Ezra was an honest man. "Twenty-five hundred lire," he replied, sullenly.

"Excuse me" (Watkins was behaving like a pitiless cad), "but you paid a great deal too much for it, I a.s.sure you. I could have got it for----"

"Mr. Watkins," my wife was hardly civil to him, "it doesn't matter much what you could have got it for."

"No," Uncle Ezra went on bravely, "I am a little troubled as to what this may mean to Maud and Professor Painter, for you see their pictures are copies."

"Undoubted modern copies," the unquenchable Watkins emended.

"Maud has learned a great deal from her picture. And as for Painter, it has been an education in art, an education in life. He said to me the night before I came away, 'Mr. Williams, I wouldn't take two thousand for that picture; it's been the greatest influence in my life.'"

I thought Watkins would have convulsions.

"And it has brought those two young souls together in a marvellous way, this common interest in fine art. You will find Maud a much more serious person, Jane. No, if I were Painter I certainly should not care a fig whether it proves to be a copy or not. I shouldn't let that influence me in my love for such an educational wonder."

The bluff was really sublime, but painful. My wife gave a decided hint to Watkins that his presence in such a family scene was awkward. He took his hat and cane. Uncle Ezra rose and grasped him cordially by the hand.

"You have been very generous, Mr. Watkins," he said, in his own sweet way, "to do such an unpleasant job. It's a large draft to make on the kindness of a friend."

"Oh, don't mention it, Mr. Williams; and if you want to buy something really fine, a Van Dyck print--a----"

Uncle Ezra was shooing him toward the door. From the stairs we could still hear his voice. "Or a Whistler etching for twenty-five pounds, I could get you, now, a very fine----"

"No, thank you, Mr. Watkins," Uncle Ezra said, firmly. "I don't believe I have any money just now for such an investment."

My wife tiptoed about the room, making faces at the exposed masterpieces. "What shall we do?" Uncle Ezra came back into the room, his face a trifle grayer and more worn. "Capital fellow, that Watkins,"

he said; "so firm and frank."

"Uncle," I ventured at random, "I met Flugel the other day in the street. You know Flugel's new book on the Renaissance. He's the coming young critic in art, has made a wonderful reputation the last three years, is on the _Beaux Arts_ staff, and really _knows_. He is living out at Frascati. I could telegraph and have him here this afternoon, perhaps."

"Well, I don't know;" his tone, however, said "Yes." "I don't care much for expert advice--for specialists. But it wouldn't do any harm to hear what he has to say. And Maud and Painter have made up their minds that Maud's is a t.i.tian."

So I ran out and sent off the despatch. My wife took Uncle Ezra down to the Forum and attempted to console him with the ugliness of genuine antiquity, while I waited for Flugel. He came in a tremendous hurry, his little, muddy eyes winking hard behind gold spectacles.

"Ah, yes," he began to paw the pictures over as if they were live stock, "that was bought for a Bonifazio," he had picked up Maud's ruby-colored prize. "Of course, of course, it's a copy, an old copy, of t.i.tian's picture, No. 3,405, in the National Gallery at London. There is a replica in the Villa Ludovisi here at Rome. It's a stupid copy, some alterations, all for the bad--worthless--well, not to the _antichita_, for it must be 1590, I should say. But worthless for us and in bad condition. I wouldn't give cinque lire for it."

"And the Bissola?" I said. "Oh, that was done in the seventeenth century--it would make good kindling. But this," he turned away from Painter's picture with a gesture of contempt, "this is Domenico Tintoretto fast enough, at least what hasn't been stippled over and painted out. St. Agnes's leg here is entire, and that tree in the background is original. A d.a.m.n bad man, but there are traces of his slop work. Perhaps the hair is by him, too. Well, good-by, old fellow; I must be off to dinner."

That was slight consolation; a leg, a tree, and some wisps of hair in a picture three feet six by four feet eight. Our dinner that evening was labored. The next morning Uncle Ezra packed his three treasures tenderly, putting in cotton-wool at the edges, my wife helping him to make them comfortable. We urged him to stay over with us for a few days; we would all go on later to Venice. But Uncle Ezra seemed moved by some hidden cause. Back he would trot at once. "Painter will want his picture," he said, "he has been waiting on in Venice just for this, and I must not keep him." Watkins turned up as we were getting into the cab to see Uncle Ezra off, and insisted upon accompanying us to the station. My wife took the opportunity to rub into him Flugel's remarks, which, at least, made Watkins out shady in chronology. At the station we encountered a new difficulty. The ticket collector would not let the pictures through the gate. My uncle expostulated in pure Tuscan.

Watkins swore in Roman.