‘Then I shall have another,’ said Mr. Erin. It was the first approach to an epigram he had ever made in his life. Anger is a short madness, genius is a kind of madness, and so, perhaps, it came about that fury suggested to him that lively sally.
‘A hundred pounds down, and half profits: that is my last word,’ cried the manager.
‘No!’ thundered the antiquary. He was still upon his legs, with his outstretched arm pointing to the door like a finger-post.
The manager walked into the passage, opened the front door, and held it in his hand.
‘A hundred and fifty, and half profits.’
‘No.’
‘Very good; more than a hundred and fifty pounds for the play of a Shakespeare who spells and with a final e I will not give.’
The door closed behind him with a great bang, which sounded, however, less like a thunder-clap to Mr. Erin than that concluding sarcasm. He was not aware that a pamphlet had been published that very morning, which pointed out that the spelling of and with an e, a practice pursued throughout the ‘Vortigern,’ had been utterly unknown, not only to Elizabethan times, but to any other.
When Mr. Erin rejoined his two young people, who were waiting for him with no little anxiety in the next room, there was no need to ask his news. His face told it.