“Well, she belongs to mine now,” answered Tembarom. “I wouldn’t lose her for a farm.”
“Would you mind my writing that down?” said the duke. “I have a fad for dialects and new phrases.” He hastily scribbled the words in a tablet that he took from his pocket. “Do you like living in England?” he asked in course of time.
“I should like it if I’d been born here,” was the answer.
“I see, I see.”
“If it had not been for finding Miss Alicia, and that I made a promise I’d stay for a year, anyhow, I’d have broken loose at the end of the first week and worked my passage back if I hadn’t had enough in my clothes to pay for it.” He laughed, but it was not real laughter. There was a thing behind it. The situation was more edifying than one could have hoped. “I made a promise, and I’m going to stick it out,” he said.
He was going to stick it out because he had promised to endure for a year Temple Barholm and an income of seventy thousand pounds! The duke gazed at him as at a fond dream realized.
“I’ve nothing to do,” Tembarom added.
“Neither have I,” replied the Duke of Stone.
“But you’re used to it, and I’m not. I’m used to working ’steen hours a day, and dropping into bed as tired as a dog, but ready to sleep like one and get up rested.”
“I used to play twenty hours a day once,” answered the duke; “but I didn’t get up rested. That’s probably why I have gout and rheumatism combined. Tell me how you worked, and I will tell you how I played.”