“Mercy on us,” cried Searle, “why didn’t you speak to us before?”
“I wanted to; half a dozen times I’ve been on the point of it. I knew you were Americans.”
“And Americans are rich!” cried Searle, laughing. “My dear Mr. Rawson, American as I am I’m living on charity.”
“And I’m exactly not, sir! There it is. I’m dying for the lack of that same. You say you’re a pauper, but it takes an American pauper to go bowling about in a Bath-chair. America’s an easy country.”
“Ah me!” groaned Searle. “Have I come to the most delicious corner of the ancient world to hear the praise of Yankeeland?”
“Delicious corners are very well, and so is the ancient world,” said Mr. Rawson; “but one may sit here hungry and shabby, so long as one isn’t too shabby, as well as elsewhere. You’ll not persuade me that it’s not an easier thing to keep afloat yonder than here. I wish I were in Yankeeland, that’s all!” he added with feeble force. Then brooding for a moment on his wrongs: “Have you a bloated brother? or you, sir? It matters little to you. But it has mattered to me with a vengeance! Shabby as I sit here I can boast that advantage—as he his five thousand a year. Being but a twelvemonth my elder he swaggers while I go thus. There’s old England for you! A very pretty place for him!”
“Poor old England!” said Searle softly.
“Has your brother never helped you?” I asked.
“A five-pound note now and then! Oh I don’t say there haven’t been times when I haven’t inspired an irresistible sympathy. I’ve not been what I should. I married dreadfully out of the way. But the devil of it is that he started fair and I started foul; with the tastes, the desires, the needs, the sensibilities of a gentleman—and not another blessed ‘tip.’ I can’t afford to live in England.”
“This poor gentleman fancied a couple of months ago that he couldn’t afford to live in America,” I fondly explained.