‘I am sure I don’t know, sir,’ replied William Henry quietly. ‘He spelt things pretty much as he pleased.’
‘That’s true, that’s true. But just now it’s certainly most disappointing that there should be any hitch. The very stars in their courses seem to fight against us.’
‘It is an unfortunate conjunction, that is all,’ said the young man, smiling again. ‘The objection of which Mr. Harris speaks may be new, but not the spelling: and was so spelt in the Profession of Faith, for example.’
‘Indeed! That had escaped my recollection. Come, that is satisfactory. All those, then, who signed the certificate will be with us. It was foolish of me to be so discouraged.’
‘And did Mr. Harris decline the play on the ground of and being written with the final e?’
‘Well, no, he didn’t decline it.’
‘He only used that argument, perhaps, in order to get it at a cheap rate?’ suggested William Henry.
This, as we know, had not been the case; he had pretty broadly hinted that he did not believe it to be Shakespeare’s play at all, and even that there might be plenty more where the ‘Vortigern’ came from, but so bound up in these wondrous discoveries had Mr. Erin’s mind become, that it was distressing and humiliating to have to confess as much, even to his son and niece.
‘Why, yes; he wanted it cheap, and therefore of course depreciated it. He only offered one hundred and fifty pounds for it and half profits.’