Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/163

 "peas" and small diamonds were set in each pod.

"Ah this!" said Harkness, holding it in his hand. "This is exquisite!"

But Crispin was restless. The eyes closed, the short body moved to another part of the room leaving all the treasures carelessly exposed behind him. "That is enough," he said—"enough of those, I bore you. And now," turning aside with a deprecatory child-like smile, as though he had been exhibiting his doll's house, "you must see the prints."

Harkness turning back to the room saw it as even shabbier than before. It was lit by candle-light, and in the centre of the round shining table there were four tall amber-coloured candlesticks that threw around them a flickering colour as the draught ruffled their power. To this table Crispin drew two chairs. Then he went to a handsome old oak cabinet carved stiffly with flowers and fruit. He stayed looking with a long lingering glance at the drawers, then sharply up at Harkness. Seen there in the mellow light, with the coloured glory of the open cabinets dimly shining in the far room, with the pleasant timid smile that a collector wears when he is approaching his beloved friends, he might have stood to Rembrandt for another "Jan Six," short and stumpy though he be.

"Now what will you have? Dürer, Whistlers, Little Masters, Meryons, Dutch seventeenth cen-