“If they were all men, I could bully them into it. Somehow, these well-dressed women stifle me. I’m not used to facing them, except professionally. What’s the matter? Shall I let go and fire straight, at any risk of offending? They ought to be offering five times as much, you know. They simply aren’t taking this thing seriously, and I don’t know how to make them.”
“If you can’t make them, I don’t know who could. Yes, speak plainly--why not? We ought not to be getting tens and twenties for such posters as those last three--each one should have brought a hundred at least. Try this one next, please.”
Burns stood straight again. He held up the sheet Jane offered him. It was a bit of wonderful colouring, showing a group of French peasants staring up at an airplane high overhead--the first British flier on his way to the Front. The awe, the faith in those watching eyes, was touching.
“Give me a hundred for this, won’t you?” he called. “Start the bid at that, and then send it flying. Never mind whether you want the poster or not. Some day it will be valuable--if not in money, then in sentiment. Now, then, who speaks?”
Nobody spoke. Then: “Oh, come, Doctor,” said one rotund gentleman, laughing, “you can’t rob us that way. The thing’s a cheap, machine-coloured print--interesting, certainly, but no more. I’ll give you ten for it--that’s enough. There’s just one poster in the whole show that’s worth a hundred dollars--and that’s the man on the horse. When you offer that I’ll be prepared to see you.”
“The man on the horse goes for not a cent under five hundred,” declared Burns, fiercely. “Starts at that--and ends at seven--eight--nine--a thousand! Meanwhile----”
But he couldn’t do it. It was a polite, suburban company, no great wealth in it, just comfortably prosperous people, not particularly patriotic as yet. The time was to come when they would see things differently, but at that period of the Great War they were mostly cold to the needs of the sufferers three thousand miles away. They saw no reason why Jane Ray should invite them to an exclusive showing of her really quite entertaining collection, and then expect them to open their pocket-books into her lap. Each one intended to buy one poster, of course, out of courtesy to Jane, but--the lower priced the better. And all the lower-priced ones were sold. The bidding went slack, all but died. Burns took out his big white handkerchief and wiped his brow, smiling ruefully down at Jane, who nodded encouragingly back. But even that encouraging nod couldn’t tell Red how to do it.