"I've never heard of anybody livin' at Brockley—I knew a chap who lived at Harrogate, poor chap with one lung."
Tuppy thought.
"Five hundred and shooting—any fishin'?"
"The river's close by, m'lord—there's Greenwich——" Tuppy brightened up.
"Greenwich! of course, whitebait. Must be devilish amusin' fishin' for whitebait: you eat 'em with brown bread, you know, like oysters——"
He wrote to Hal that day, tentatively accepting the offer. Hal made an appointment for his lordly tenant, and fumed for three hours in his city office until Tuppy turned up.
"I say!" said the aggrieved Hal ostentatiously displaying his watch; "I say, Tuppy, old man, dash it! You said eleven and it's two! Hang it all!"
"Don't be peevish," begged the peer, "if I'd said two it would have been five."
"Time is money," complained Hal.
"Wise old bird," said Tuppy earnestly, "your interestin' and perfectly original apothegm merely elucidates my position. It's the habit of years to overdraw my account."