d to stick to a varnish pot
and a scraper! Damnable, isn't it? But we don't growl, do we, Sammy?
When Sammy has anything left over, he brings half of it down to me--he
lives on the floor above--and when I get a little ahead and Sammy is
behind, I send it up to him. We are the Siamese twins, Sammy and I,
aren't we, Sam? Where are you, anyway? Oh, he's after the dog, I see,
moving the canvases so the little beggar won't run a thumb-tack in his
paw. Sam can no more resist a dog, my dear Mr. O'Day, than a drunkard
can a rum-mill, can you, Sam?"

"At it again, are you, Nat?" wheezed the wizened old gentleman, dusting
his fingers as he reappeared from behind the canvases, his watery eyes
edged with a deeper red, due to his exertions. "Don't pay any attention
to him, Mr. O'Day. What he says isn't half true, and the half that
is true isn't worth listening to. Now tell me about that frame he's
ordered. He don't want it, and I've told him so. If you are willing to
lend it to him, he'll pay you for it when the picture is sold, which
will never be, and by that time he'll--"

"Dry up, you old varnish pot!" shouted Ganger, "how do you know I won't
pay for it?"

"Because your picture will never be hung--that's why!"

"Mr. Ganger did not want to buy it," broke in Felix, between puffs from
one of his host's corn-cob pipes. "He wanted to exchange something for
it--'swap' he called it."

"Oh, well," wheezed Sam, "that's another thing. What were you going to
give him in return, Nat? Careful, now--there's not much left."

"Oh, maybe some old stuff, Sammy. Move along, you blessed little
child--and you, too, Jane Hoggson! You're sitting on my Venetian
wedding-chest--real, too! I bought it forty years ago in Padua. There
are some old embroideries down in the bottom, or were, unless Sam has
been in here while I--Oh, no, here they are! Beg pardon, Sammy, for
suspecting you. There--what do you think of these?"

Felix bent over the pile of stuffs, which, under Ganger's continued
dumpings, was growing larger every minute--the last to see the light
being part of a priest's Cope and two chasubles.

"There--that is enough!" said Felix. "This chasuble alone is worth more
than the frame. We will put the Florentine frame at ten dollars and the
vestment at fifteen. What others have you, Mr. Ganger? There's a great
demand for these things when they are good, and these are good. Where
did you get them?"

"Worth more than the frame? Holy Moses!" w