“But, still, the letters are worth paying for,” ended Mr. Moss Rubelius. “And your Grace can have em—at my price.”
“What is your price?” asked the Duchess, trying in vain to read in the stolid physiognomy before her the secret purpose of the soul within.
“Perhaps your Grace wouldn’t mind my taking a chair?” insinuated Mr. Rubelius.
“Do as you please, sir,” said the Duchess, “only be brief.”
“I’ll try,” said the money-lender, comfortably crossing his legs. “To begin—we’re in the London Season and the month of March, and your Grace has a party at Rantorlie for the April salmon-fishing. Angling’s my one vice—my only weakness, ever since I caught minnows in the Regent’s Canal with a pickle-bottle tied to a string. Coarse fishing in the Thames was my recreation in grub times, whenever I ’ad a day away from our office in the Minories. Trout I’ve caught now and then, with a worm on a Stuart tackle—since I became a butterfly. But I’ve never had a slap at a salmon, and the finest salmon-anglin’ in the kingdom is to be ’ad in the Haste, below Rantorlie. Ask me there for April, see that I ’ave the pick of the sport, even if you ’ave a Royal duke to cater for, as you ’ad last year, and, the day I land my first twenty-pounder, the letters are yours.”
The Duchess burst out laughing wildly.
“Ha, ha! Oh!” she cried; “it is impossible to help it.... I can’t!... It is so.... Ha, ha, ha!”
“I shan’t disgrace you,” said Mr. Rubelius. “My kit and turn-out will be by the best makers, and I’ll tip the ’ead gillie fifty pound. I’m a soft-hearted hass to let the letters go so cheap, but——Golly! the chance of catchin’ a twenty-pound specimen of Salmo salar that a Royal ’Ighness ’as angled for in vain!... Look ’ere, your Grace”—his tones were oily with entreaty—“write me the invitation now, on the spot, and you shall ’ave back the first three of those nine letters down on the nail.”
“You have them——?”
“With me!” said Mr. Rubelius, producing a letter-case attached to his stout person by a chain. “The others are—say, in retirement for the present.” He extracted from the case three large, square, gray envelopes, their addresses penned in a large, angular, girlish hand. “Write me the invite now,” he said, “and these are yours to burn or show to his Grace—whichever you please. The others shall be yours the day I land my twenty-pounder.”