f 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.

"You speak of an 'absolute gratuity.' I know nothing of London City
methods--but isn't ten thousand pounds a gratuity on a rather large
scale?"

Thorpe hesitated briefly, then smiled, and, with slow deliberation, drew
up a chair and seated himself before them. "Perhaps I don't mind telling
you about it," he began, and paused again. "I had a letter in my mail
this morning," he went on at last, giving a sentimental significance to
both tone and glance--"a letter which changed everything in the world
for me, and made me the proudest and happiest man above ground. And
I put that letter in my pocket, right here on the left side--and it's
there now, for that matter"--he put his hand to his breast, as if under
the impulse to verify his words by the production of the missive, and
then stopped and flushed.

The ladies, watching him, seemed by their eyes to condone the
mawkishness of the demonstration which had tempted him. There was indeed
a kind of approving interest in their joint regard, which he had not
experienced before.

"I had it in my pocket," he resumed, with an accession of mellow emotion
in his voice, "and none of the callers ever got my thoughts very far
from that letter. And one of these was an old man--a French banker who
must be seventy years old, but dyes his hair a kind of purple black--and
it seems that his nephew had got the firm into a terrible kind of
scrape, selling 2,000 of my shares when he hadn't got them to sell and
couldn't get them--and the old man came to beg me to let him out at
present market figures. He got Lord Chaldon--he's my Chairman, you
know--to bring him, and introduce him as his friend, and plead for
him--but I don't think all that, by itself, would have budged me an
atom. But then the old man told how he was just able to scrape together
money enough to buy the shares he needed, at the ruling pr