enlivening his two perfectly appointed rooms were still unpaid for,
never worried Jack.

"That fellow's place," he would say of some dealer, "is such a jumble
and so dark that nobody can see what he's got. Ought to be very grateful
to me that I put 'em where people could see 'em. If I can pay for 'em,
all right, and if I can't, let him take 'em back. He always knows where
to find 'em. I'm not going to have an auction."

This last course of "taking his purchases back" had been followed by a
good many of Jack's creditors, who, at last, tired out, had driven up a
furniture van and carted the missing articles home again. Others, more
patient, dunned persistently and continually--every morning some one of
them--until Jack, roused to an extra effort, painted pot-boilers
(portrait of a dog, or a child with a rabbit, or Uncle John's exact
image from a daguerrotype many years in the family) up to the time the
debt was discharged and the precious bit of old Spanish leather or the
Venetian chest or Sixteenth Century chair became his very own for all
time to come.

This "last-moment" act of Jack's--this reprieve habit of saving his
financial life, as the noose was being slipped over his bankrupt
neck--instead of strangling Jack's credit beyond repair, really improved
it. The dealer generally added an extra price for interest and the
trouble of collecting (including cartage both ways), knowing that his
property was perfectly safe as long as it stayed in Jack's admirably
cared-for studio, and few of them ever refused the painter anything he
wanted. When inquiries were made as to his financial standing the report
was invariably, "Honest but slow--he'll pay some time and somehow," and
the ghost of a bad debt was laid.