“There was the hundred pounds you gave him to buy looking glasses,” he said. “You didn’t give him more than that, did you?”
“Not so much,” I said. “The bill for those mirrors was only £98-7-6; and I made the man knock off the seven and sixpence as discount for cash. I’m learning to be a business man by degrees.”
Gorman wrote down £98 on the cover of his cheque book.
“And the hire of the hall?” he said. “What will that come to?”
I had hired a small hall for the exhibition of Tim’s moving picture ghosts. I had invited about a hundred people to witness the show. Gorman himself, a brother of the inventor, had promised to preside over the gathering and to make a few introductory remarks on the progress of science or anything else that occurred to him as appropriate to such an occasion. But I could not possibly allow him to pay for the entertainment.
“My dear Gorman,” I said, “it’s my party. The people are my friends. At least some of them are. The invitations have gone out in my name. You might just as well propose to pay for the tea I mean to offer them to drink as for the hire of the room in which I am going to receive them.”
“Will £150 cover the whole show?” said Gorman.
“If you insist on heaping insults on my head,” I said, “I shall retire into a nursing home and cancel all the invitations.”
“You’re an obstinate man,” said Gorman.
“Very. In matters of this kind.”