"It's a pleasure, for example, to buy Rubber Consols
at par."
"Oh, if you call it buying," said Thorpe, and then
softened his words with an apologetic laugh. "I didn't
tell you, did I? I've been spending Saturday and Sunday
with Plowden--you know, the Lord Plowden on my Board."
"I know of him very well," observed the Scotchman.
"Has he a place that he asks people down to, then? That
isn't the usual form with guinea-pigs."
"Ah, but, he isn't the guinea-pig variety at all,"
Thorpe asserted, warmly. "He's really a splendid
fellow--with his little oddities, like the rest of us,
of course, but a decent chap all through. Place? I should
think he HAD got a place! It's one of the swellest old
country-houses you ever saw--older than hell, you know--and
it's kept up as if they had fifty thousand a year.
Do you happen to know what his real income is supposed
to be?"
Semple shook his head. He had taken his hat, and was
smoothing it deftly with the palm of his hand.
"I asked," Thorpe went on, "because he had so much to say
about his poverty. To hear him talk, you'd think the
bailiffs were sitting on his doorstep. That doesn't prevent
his having fast horses, and servants all over the place,
and about the best shooting I've seen in the South
of England. As luck would have it, I was in wonderful form.
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