Well, the newspapers published everything--his height and weight, the tooth he has out on the left side, every rag in his boxes, pictures of them, everything in Miss Dowie’s trousseau--columns and columns. And how he _did_ hop round when he found that the Dowies had actually hired a fellow and a woman to give out facts to the press! What do you think of that for a Yankee notion?
You can’t imagine the presents. You’d have thought the crown princess was marrying. The newspapers say they alone were worth a million and a half, American money. I and Cleggett went over them, and we decided they’d fetch more. You know, Cleggett--he’s Georgie’s solicitor--is over here looking after the settlements. He simply had to put the screws onto old Dowie. I got a good many hints from him on how to deal with these beggars in money matters. Dowie’s a shrewd chap. He and Cleggett did all the money talk. Georgie was supposed to know nothing about it. But maybe he wasn’t in a funk when it began to look as if the whole business were off at the last minute. I had to work hard to keep him up to the mark. Cleggett won out, though--got a hundred thousand pounds more than Georgie expected.
To go back to the presents, her uncle--one of the ha’penny rags here said he’s been in the penitentiary, but I hear it’s not true--he gave her a yacht, a regular ocean steamer. You’ll admire the necklace her aunt sent her--it can’t have cost less than fifty thousand, our money. It makes me ill to see these beggars wading and wallowing in money. By the way, I notice that while they talk of spending money, they talk of making it as much as they talk of spending it, if not more.
Wallingford, a fellow I’ve met here, said to me at dinner the other night, a few minutes after the women had gone: “Shall we stay here with the men and discuss making money, or shall we go up to the women and discuss spending it?”
But to go back to Georgie and his coming down to meet me. I saw him on the pier, his face like a sunset and his arms going like mad. He was haranguing a crowd in which there were several cameras. I shouted to him--I and Miss Longview and her father were at the rail together. As I shouted the crowd looked, and the cameras were pointed at us. Miss Longview darted away, and her father pulled at me.