“Health, my Lord,—health,” said he, with one of his ready laughs, as though everything he said or thought had some comic side in it that amused him, “and a touch of economy too, my Lord.”
“What humbug all that is, Twining. Who the deuce is so well off as yourself?” said Lord Lackington, with all that peculiar bitterness with which an embarrassed man listens to the grumblings of a wealthy one.
“Only too happy, my Lord—rejoiced if you were right. Capital news for me, eh?—excellent news!” And he slapped his lean legs with his long thin fingers, and laughed immoderately.
“Come, come, we all know that—besides a devilish good thing of your own—you got the Wrexley estate, and old Poole's Dorsetshire property. Hang me if I ever open a newspaper without reading that you are somebody's residuary legatee.”
“I assure you, solemnly, my Lord, I am actually hard up, pressed for money, downright inconvenienced.” And he laughed again, as though it were uncommonly droll.
“Stuff—nonsense!” said my Lord, angrily, for he really was losing temper; and to change the topic he curtly asked, “And where do you mean to pass the winter?”
“In Florence, my Lord, or Naples. We have a little den in both places.”
The “den” in Florence was a sumptuous palace on the Arno. Its brother at Naples was a royal villa near Posilippo.
“Why not Rome? Lady Lackington and myself mean to try Rome.”
“Ah, all very well for you, my Lord, but for people of small fortune—”