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If Marian tried to bring him to speak to some poor old man, his answer was, "Give him this half-crown, then, that will do just as well!" and he walked off out of reach, while she remained to present the gift, and hear in answer, "Thank you kindly, Miss; I should like to see the young gentleman himself, but I daresay he does not like poor people."
He had paid his bills at Bournemouth; his worldly effects were all in the van in two portmanteaux, and these after the proper interval would be sold as unclaimed baggage to a Jew; Sir Faraday's butler would be a half-crown poorer at the year's end, and the hotelkeepers of Europe about the same date would be mourning a small but quite observable decline in profits. And that would be literally all.
"How much a glass, think you?" says Fred, filling another bumper. "A half-crown, think ye? a half-crown, Honeyman? By cock and pye, it is not worth a bender." He says this in the manner of the most celebrated tragedian of the day.
It contained a half-crown, two halfpennies, and a sixpence. So he took the sixpence, put the purse carefully back, and went out. The next day, when she wanted to pay the greengrocer, she looked in the purse for her sixpence, and her heart sank to her shoes. Then she sat down and thought: "WAS there a sixpence? I hadn't spent it, had I? And I hadn't left it anywhere else?" She was much put about.
'If a man takes a room of you at half-a-crown a week, and when the week comes round hasn't got the half-crown, you say to that man, Why have you got the room, then? If you haven't got the one thing, why have you got the other? What have you been and done with your money? What do you mean by it? What are you up to?
Nor was the victim passive; debarred writing materials, he cut the rims off several copies of the Times, and secreted them: then catching sight of some ink-blots on the back of Frank's clothes-brush, scraped them carefully off, melted them in a very little water, and with a toothpick scrawled his wrongs to the Commissioners; he rolled the slips round a half-crown, and wrote outside, "Good Christian, keep this half-crown, and take the writing to the Lunacy Commissioners at Whitehall, for pity's sake."
The Laird was clearing his voice to speak, and thrusting his hand in his pocket to find a half-crown; the gipsy waited neither for his reply nor his donation, but strode down the hill to overtake the caravan. Ellangowan rode pensively home; and it was remarkable that he did not mention this interview to any of his family. The groom was not so reserved.
But I kept on bravely enough, and did not despair or leave off while I had a half-crown left. That half-crown, however, was soon raked up with the rest into the keeper's bag. I was bankrupt, with nothing in my pocket but twopence and a return ticket from Paddington. Hopeless and helpless, I had learnt a lesson a lesson you can only learn in the school of experience.
Macalister had a sarcastic tongue. "I think I will have a flutter if you don't mind," said Philip anxiously. "All right. I'll buy you two hundred and fifty shares and if I see a half-crown rise I'll sell them at once." Philip quickly reckoned out how much that would amount to, and his mouth watered; thirty pounds would be a godsend just then, and he thought the fates owed him something.
I must have someone who is poor too poor to question my will, or to dispute my orders, whatever they might be." "I have never," Aynesworth declared, "possessed a superfluous half-crown in my life." "You probably possess what is called a sense of honor," Wingrave continued. "You would certainly disapprove of some of my proceedings, and you would probably disobey my orders." "Sense of honor!"
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