Southern States -- Social life and customs -- 1775-1865 -- Fiction
Gadgem blushed. St. George's democracy he could understand; but why this
aristocrat--outcast as he had once been, but now again in favor--why
this young prince, the heir to Moorlands and the first young blood of
his time, should treat him as an equal, puzzled him; and yet, somehow,
his heart warmed to him as he read his sincerity in his eyes and voice.
“Thank you, sir--thank you very much, sir,” rejoined Gadgem, with a
folding-camp-stool-movement, his back bent at right angles with his
legs. “I really don't deserve it, sir. Mr. Temple is an EXtraordinary
man, sir; the most EXtraordinary man I have ever met, sir. Give you the
shirt off his back, sir, and go NAked himself.”
“Yes, he gave it to me,” laughed Harry, greatly amused at the
collector's effusive manner: He had never seen this side of Gadgem.
“That, of course, you know all about--you paid the bills, I believe.”
“PREcisely so, sir.” He had lengthened out now with a spiral-spring,
cork-screw twist in his body, his index finger serving as point. “Paid
every one of them. He never cared, sir--he GLOried in it--GLOried in
being a pauper. UNaccountable, Mr. Rutter--Enormously unaccountable.
Never heard of such a case; never WILL hear of such a case. So what was
to be done, sir? Just what I may state is being done this minute
over our heads UPstairs”: and out went the index finger. “Rest and
REcuperation, sir--a slow--a very slow use of AVAILable assets until new
and FURther AVAILable assets could become visible. And they are here,
sir--have arRIVED. You may have heard, of course, of the Patapsco where
Mr. Temple kept the largest part of his fortune.”
“No, except that it about ruined everybody who had anything to do with
it.”
“Then you have heard nothing of the REsuscitation!” cried Gadgem, all
his fingers opened like a fan, his eyebrows arched to the roots of his
hair. “You surPRISE me! And you are really ignorant of the PHOEnix-like
way in which it has RISen from its ashes? I said RISen, sir, because it
is now but a dim speck in the financial sky. Nor the appointment of Mr.
John Gorsuch as manager, ably backed by your DIStinguished father--the
setting of the bird upon its legs--I'm speaking of the burnt bird, sir,
the PHOEnix. I'm quite sure it was a bird--Nor the payment on the first
of the ensuing month of some eighty per cent of the amounts due
the ORIGinal depositors and another twenty per cent in one year
thereafter--The cancelling of the mortgage which your most BEnevolent
and HONorable father bought, and the sly trick of Gorsuch--letting
Fogbin, who never turned up, become the sham tenant--and the joy--”
“Hold on Mr. Gadgem--I'm not good at figures. Give me that over again
and speak slower. Am I to understand that the bank will pay back to my
uncle, within a day or so, three-quarters of the money they stole from
him?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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