rame's a good hard-wood frame, too. I'll
look up my books and see who sent them pictures in for sale. Then I can
see if they put a figger on them."

He made notes of the chalk numbers marked on the backs of the
picture-boards and then started for his office. Mrs. Fabian, with sinking
heart, followed at his heels.

"If he looks up his records and finds they came from the old house of
Paul Revere and his descendants, he will never sell them at a decent
price," thought she, impatiently.

She sat opposite the old man while he fumbled the pages of his book and
slowly glanced down the entries, his bent fore-finger pointing to each
item carefully as he read.

"Um! Here it is: Number 329, came from Sarah Dolan, who moved to a
smaller flat last Spring. From this entry I see that all them seven
pictures came from her. Do you happen to know her?"

Mr. Van Styne glanced up at his companion.

She shook her head, and he said, closing the book, "Why, Sally Dolan was
cook fer the Revere boys, and when they broke up, she started a bordin'
house down on Morris Street. Then she took rheumatiz and was that
crippled, she couldn't get about the kitchen no more, so she gave up. Her
boys manage to keep her now, and she takes things easy. But she sure was
a good cook!"

Much as Mrs. Fabian would have liked to question the old man about the
Revere boys she feared he might remember that the cook was given a lot of
old pictures when the boys "broke up", so she turned the subject
adroitly.

"Well, I'll go and see what the girls have found out there, I guess. But
I wish you'd fix a price on those four frames."

"Lem'me see, now. Sal Dolan didn't set no price, and if I say five
dollars for the four, would you take 'em?"

"Dear me!" objected Mrs. Fabian, craftily. "The large one you said was
worth about a dollar-thirty, and the fish-picture a dollar. That leaves
two dollars and seventy cents for the other two. Isn't that pretty high
for them?"

"But that fish picture makes a fine dinin' room piece, especially if you
could get the mate what is a brace of quails."

"Oh well, rather than jew you down, I'll take them, if you will take the
trouble to make me out a receipt for the four."

"Ain't this a cash sale?" queried the man, wonderingly.

"Of course, but two of them are for friends. I only intend keeping the
other two. I want them, to have the bill to show, you see."

Thereupon Mr. Van Styne wrote out the bill on a scrap of paper an