III

Summary

“AH, Mr. Crimble,” he cordially inquired, “you’ve come with your great news?”

Hugh caught the allusion, it would have seemed, but after a moment. “News of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven't news yet.” But he added as with high candour for the visitor's motion of disappointment: “I think I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four weeks.”

“Well, in my country,” Mr. Bender returned with disgust, “it would take three or four minutes! Can't you make ‘em step more lively?”

“I’m expecting, sir,” said Hugh good-humouredly, “a report from hour to hour.”

“Then will you let me have it right off?”

Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly: “Ah, it's scarcely for you, Mr. Bender that I’m acting!”

The great collector was but briefly checked. “Well, can't you just act for Art?”

“Oh, you’re doing that yourself so powerfully,” Hugh laughed, “that I think I had best leave it to you!”

His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a new improvement. “Don't you want to go round acting with me?”

“Go ‘on tour,’ as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender,” Hugh said, “if I had any weight——!”

“You’d add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that you should go back on me—after working me up so down there? The worst I’ve done,” Mr. Bender continued, “is to refuse that Moretto.”

“Has it deplorably been offered you?” our young man cried, unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving the owner of the great work away: “Then why are you—as if you were a banished Romeo—so keen for news from Verona?” To this odd mixture of business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself with but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of tested utility; so that Hugh put him another question: “Aren't you here, sir, on the chance of the Mantovano?”