“Let him tell you,” said O'Shea, with a most expressive look at Heathcote. “He knows him as well or better than I do.”
“Yes,” said Heathcote, tantalizing him on purpose; “but when a man sets out by saying, 'I don't want to sell my horse,' of course it means, 'If you will have him, you must pay a fancy price.'”
If O'Shea's expression could be rendered in words, it might be read thus: “And if that be the very game I'm playing, ain't you a downright idiot to spoil it?”
“Well,” said Agincourt, after a pause, “I 'm just in the sort of humor this morning to do an extravagant thing, or a silly one.”
“Lucky fellow!” broke in Heathcote, “for O'Shea's the very man to assist you to your project.”
“I am!” said O'Shea, firmly and quickly; “for there's not the man living has scattered his money more freely than myself. Before I came of age, when I was just a slip of a boy, about nineteen—”
“Never mind the anecdote, old fellow,” said Heathcote, laughingly, as he laid his hand on the other's shoulder. “Agincourt has just confessed himself in the frame of mind to be 'done.' Do him, therefore, by all means. Say a hundred and fifty for the nag, and he 'll give it, and keep your good story for another roguery.”
“Isn't he polite?—isn't he a young man of charming manners and elegant address?” said O'Shea, with a strange mixture of drollery and displeasure.
“He's right, at all events,” said Agincourt, laughing at the other's face; “he's right as regards me. I 'll give you a hundred and fifty for the horse without seeing him.”
“Oh, mother of Moses! I wish your guardian was like you.”