"So far as I'm concerned, it makes some difference," retorted Ned with spirit. "That particular coin won't be put to baser uses."
There was a pause, broken only by Ned's vain effort to get his cheroot to draw. Suddenly he flung it aside, edged himself out of the shadow into the light and faced his namesake.
"Look here, Cruttenden," he said, "I've got something to explain to you, because--well--because I want this thing to be fair and square between us. The fact is, that though my name is Edward Cruttenden all right, I have the misfortune to have been for the last two years, most unexpectedly, Lord Blackborough."
"Lord Blackborough!" echoed Ted slowly. "Why--why, you're--you're my master--that is to say, I'm one of your clerks--and--and you're the richest man in the midlands."
"I believe I was, a year ago; but money doesn't stick by me. I wasn't brought up to it. Yes, I became Lord Blackborough against my will, by the death of my uncle, a cripple, who inherited the barony--bought by screws chiefly--from the original purchaser, who had a fit on hearing that his only son had shot himself over a woman. A squalid story, and the distinction between us is, as you see, a purely artificial one----"
"I quite agree with your lordship," interrupted Ted.
"My dear fellow," replied Lord Blackborough, "you will oblige me by not being a garden ass. The fact is, we have a considerable likeness to each other outside, in which you have distinctly the advantage. You're taller, broader; briefly, the better looking. As to the inside, we differ somewhat, but there again you have the qualities which make for wealth, and I haven't. I can see myself a poor man in my old age. Then we tumbled off our cycles together in an equal way. In a still more equal way we have tumbled into--let us say, this Garden of Eden. Now, why shouldn't we remain in it on equal terms?"
"Because it is impossible. You are Lord Blackborough, and I am your clerk."
"But why should we not remain the brothers Cruttenden? In this remote----"
"Impossible," repeated Ted angrily.