Very well; here I am! I've made my coup! And I'd be a sweep,
wouldn't I? to forget to-day what I was so glad to remember
a week ago. But you see, I don't forget! The capital
of the Company is 500,000 pounds, all in pound shares.
We offered the public only a fifth of them. The other
four hundred thousand shares are mine as vendor--and I
have ear-marked in my mind one hundred thousand of them
to be yours."
Lord Plowden's face paled at the significance of these words.
"It is too much--you don't reflect what it is you
are saying," he murmured confusedly. "Not a bit of it,"
the other reassured him. "Everything that I've said goes."
The peer, trembling a little, rose to his feet. "It is a
preposterously big reward for the merest act of courtesy,"
he insisted. "Of course it takes my breath away for joy--and
yet I feel I oughtn't to be consenting to it at all.
And it has its unpleasant side--it buries me under a mountain
of obligation. I don't know what to do or what to say."
"Well, leave the saying and doing to me, then," replied Thorpe,
with a gesture before which the other resumed his seat.
"Just a word more--and then I suppose we'd better be going.
Look at it in this way. Your grandfather was Lord
Chancellor of England, and your father was a General
in the Crimea. My grandfather kept a small second-hand
book-shop, and my father followed him in the business.
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