"Well then, there was a man who wanted me to take
the chairmanship of a company, and one who wanted me
to guarantee an overdraft at his bank, and two who
wanted to borrow money on stock, and one parson-fellow
who tried to stick me for a subscription to some Home
or other he said he had for children in the country.
He was the worst bounder of the lot.
"Well, there's twenty-seven people--and twenty of them
strangers to me, and not worth a penny to me, and all
trying to get money out of me. Isn't that a dog's life
for one?"
"I don't know," said Miss Madden, contemplatively.
"A lady may have twice that number of callers in an
afternoon--quite as great strangers to all intents
and purposes--and not even have the satisfaction of
discovering that they had any object whatever in calling.
At least your people had some motive: the grey matter
in their brain was working. And besides, one of them
might have had something to say which you would value.
I don't think that ever happens among a lady's callers;
does it, Edith?"
Edith smiled, pleasantly and yet a little wistfully,
but said nothing.
"At any rate," Thorpe went on, with a kind of purpose
gathering in his eyes, "none of those fellows cost
me anything, except in time. But then I had three callers,
almost in a bunch, and one of them took out of me thirty
thousand pounds, and another fifteen thousand pounds,
and the third--an utter stranger he was--he got an absolute
gratuity of ten thousand pounds, besides my consent
to a sale which, if I had refused it, would have stood
me in perhaps forty or fifty thousand pounds more.
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