'His thin eyebrows surged up in a piece and come down again
in a stiff bar. "He went to the King," he says.

'"All one. Where's your pleasure with me?" I says, shivering,
for it was mortal cold.

'He lays his hand flat on my draft. "Master Dawe," he says,
"do you know the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked
gilding of yours?"

'By that I guessed he was some cheese-paring clerk or other of
the King's Ships, so I gave him the price. I forget it now, but it
worked out to thirty pounds - carved, gilt, and fitted in place.

'"Thirty pounds!" he said, as though I had pulled a tooth of
him. "You talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the
asking. None the less," he says, "your draft's a fine piece of work."

'I'd been looking at it ever since I came in, and 'twas viler even
than I judged it at first. My eye and hand had been purified the
past months, d'ye see, by my iron work.

'"I could do it better now," I said. The more I studied my
squabby Neptunes the less I liked 'em; and Arion was a pure
flaming shame atop of the unbalanced dolphins.

'"I doubt it will be fresh expense to draft it again," he says.

'"Bob never paid me for the first draft. I lay he'll never pay me
for the second. 'Twill cost the King nothing if I re-draw it," I says.