“Then there were three inventors--let's see, here they are--one with a coiled wire spring for scissors inside a pocket-knife, and one with a bottle, the whole top of which unscrews instead of having a cork or stopper, and one with an electrical fish-line, a fine wire inside the silk, you know, which connects with some battery when a fish bites, and rings a bell, and throws out hooks in various directions, and does all sorts of things.
“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. You ladies may thank your stars you don't have that kind of callers!”
The sound of these figures in the air brought a constrained look to the faces of the women. Seemingly they confronted a subject which was not to their liking. The American, however, after a moment's pause, took it up in an indifferent manner.