“Then do you consider that you account for this one?”
“I believe I shall if you’ll give me time.”
“Oh, time!” Mr. Bender impatiently sighed. “But we’ll give you all we’ve got—only I guess it isn’t much.” And he appeared freely to invite their companions to join in this estimate. They listened to him, however, they watched him, for the moment, but in silence, and with the next he had gone on: “How much higher—if your idea is correct about it—would Lord Theign’s picture come?”
Hugh turned to that nobleman. “Does Mr. Bender mean come to him, my lord?”
Lord Theign looked again hard at Hugh, and then harder than he had done yet at his other invader. “I don’t know what Mr. Bender means!” With which he turned off.
“Well, I guess I mean that it would come higher to me than to any one! But how much higher?” the American continued to Hugh.
“How much higher to you?”
“Oh, I can size that. How much higher as a Mantovano?”
Unmistakably—for us at least—our young man was gaining time; he had the instinct of circumspection and delay. “To any one?”
“To any one.”