"The curious thing about it is that she hasn't a dollar an' Tuppy knows it. Her father is just a plain American gentleman with a contempt for millionaires: I doubt if his capital value runs into six figures—dollars I mean."
"Have you been matchmaking?" asked the Duke severely, and Hank blushed.
"I've no use for lords an' suchlike foolishness," he confessed, "but Tuppy has possibilities." His declaration in Tuppy's favour coincided with one made by that worthy on his own behalf.
He had at little trouble secured an introduction to the laughing girl who had acted as Hank's interlocutor.
Now, on the back of a gaily caparisoned mule, he was returning from an excursion to the suburbs, and the girl who rode the donkey at his side was listening demurely whilst Tuppy spoke upon his favourite subject—which was Tuppy.
"You must understand, Miss Boardman," he said, "that mine is a blighted life: I'm a piece of humanity's flotsam, a pathetic chunk of wreckage on the sea of human existence."
"Oh, no, Lord Tupping," murmured the girl.
"It's true," said Tuppy gloomily, "saddled by rank an' bridled by circumstance" (this was his pet figure), "I've been outdistanced an' outfaced in the Marathon of Life. My whole nature, naturally pure an' confidin', has been warped an' distorted by a variety of conditions, an' even the early grave to which I would extend a fervent welcome—steady, you beast." He jerked back the reins of his prancing mule, readjusted his hat and eye-glass and proceeded—"The merciful dissolution for which I yearned was denied me, an' doomed to tread the thorny path that leads to oblivion—I'll knock your head off if you don't keep quiet—doomed to stalk, if I may use the expression—a sad shadow amidst the laughin' throng, I've become a wretched, embittered creature."
"Oh, no, Lord Tupping!" dissented the girl.
"Sometimes," Tuppy proceeded recklessly, "I'm in such a dashed horridly low state that I don't care what happens—when I would gladly change places with fellers goin' out to war, an' all that sort of thing. I did volunteer for the Boer war, but my stupid man forgot to post the letter."