Fair Margaret: A Portrait

by F. Marion Crawford

'For doing nothing. I should like to be your lawyer! I suppose three thousand more will satisfy him? Yes, that will make it a round twenty thousand. That leaves your claim worth four hundred and eighty thousand dollars, does it not?'

'Yes, certainly.'

'Which at four-eighty-four is—' he looked at the ceiling for ten seconds—'ninety-nine thousand one hundred and eleven pounds, two shillings and twopence halfpenny—within a fraction. Is that it? My mental arithmetic is generally pretty fair.'

'I've no doubt that the calculation is correct,' said Mrs. Rushmore, 'only it seems to me—let me see—I'm a little confused—but it seems to me that if I had won the suit for half a million, the lawyer's expenses would have come out of that.'

'They do come out of it,' answered Logotheti blandly. 'That is why you don't get half a million.'

'Yes,' insisted Mrs. Rushmore, who was not easily misled about money, 'certainly. But as it is, after I have received the four hundred and eighty thousand, I shall still have to deduct the twenty thousand for the lawyers before handing it over to Margaret, who would only get four hundred and sixty. Excuse me, perhaps you don't understand.'

'Yes, yes! I do.' Logotheti smiled pleasantly. 'It was very stupid of me, wasn't it? I'm always doing things like that!'

As indeed financiers are, for arithmetical obliquity about money is caused by having too much or too little of it, and the people who lose to both sides are generally the comparatively honest ones who have enough. It certainly did not occur to Logotheti that he had tried to do Margaret Donne out of four thousand pounds; he would have been only too delighted to give her ten times the sum if she would have accepted it, and so far as profit went the whole transaction was for her benefit, and he might lose heavily by it. But in actual dealing he was constitutionally unable to resist the impulse to get the better of the person with whom he dealt. And on her side, Mrs. Rushmore, though generous to a fault, was by nature incapable of allowing money to slip through her fingers without reason. So the two were well matched, being both born financiers, and Logotheti respected Mrs. Rushmore for detecting his little 'mistake,' and she recognised in him a real 'man of business' because he had made it.

'Let us call it a half million dollars, then,' he said, with a smile. 'At four-eighty-four, that is'—again he looked at the ceiling for ten seconds—'that is one hundred and three thousand three hundred and five pounds fifteen shillings fivepence halfpenny, nearly. Is that it? Shall we say that, Mrs. Rushmore.'

'How quickly you do it!' exclaimed the lady in admiration. 'I wish I could do that! Oh yes, I have no doubt it is quite correct. You couldn't do it on paper, could you? You see it doesn't matter so much about the halfpenny, but if there were a little slip in the thousands, you know—it would make quite a difference——'