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"Oh! yes, sir; his food and his Will. It's quite a sight to see him turn it over and over, not to read it, of course; and every now and then he asks the price of Consols, and I write it on a slate for him very large. Of course, I always write the same, what they were when he last took notice, in 1914. We got the doctor to forbid him to read the paper when the War broke out.
"Well, I will answer for half a million consols," said Ormsby, "for my lawyer, when he made a little investment for me the other day, saw the entry himself in the bank-books; our names are very near, you know M, and O. Then there is her jointure, something like ten thousand a year." "No, no; not seven." "Well, that would do."
Let us go back a century, and suppose that three problems were laid before the men of that day, and they were asked to decide which is the most impossible: 1st, to diffuse intelligence from a fixed island over a hundred leagues of water; 2d, to make the sun take in thirty seconds likenesses more exact than any portrait-painter ever took likenesses that can be sold for a shilling at fifty per cent profit; 3d, for New York and London to exchange words by wire so much faster than the earth can turn, that London shall tell New York at ten on Monday morning what was the price of consols at two o'clock Monday afternoon."
I came along into the thick of these fellows; they were yelling out all sorts of things 'East Rands, 'Oroyas, 'Lake View Centrals, and what not, but these went in one ear and out the other. If there ever was a man with no stomach for the market it was me. But then someone roared out: "'At seven-eighths, sell Rubber Consols! Sell five hundred Rubber at seven-eighths!
In 1847, even in 1866 the latest panic, and the one in which on the whole the Bank acted the best there was nevertheless an instant when it was believed the Bank would not advance on Consols, or at least hesitated to advance on them. The moment this was reported in the City and telegraphed to the country, it made the panic indefinitely worse.
IN the noon hour of the following day was enacted the brief final scene in the drama of the "Rubber Consols corner." For long weeks, Mr. Stormont Thorpe had given much thought to this approaching climax of his great adventure looking forward to it both as the crowning event of his life, and as the dawn of a new existence in some novel, enchanted world.
They owed this invidious differentiation to a number of causes: they had been the chief sellers of stock, being between them responsible for the delivery of 8,500 Rubber Consols shares, which they could not get; they were men of larger fortune than the other "shorts," and therefore could with safety be squeezed longest; what was fortunate for him under the circumstances, they were the two men against whom Thorpe's personal grudge seemed able to maintain itself most easily.
But there is no reason why Captain Lake should object. He has only to hand you a receipt in my name for the amount of cheques you may give him, and to lodge a portion of it where I told him, and the rest to buy Consols; and I suppose he will expect payment for his no-trouble. Every fellow, particularly these gentlemanlike fellows, they have a pluck at you when they can.
Excuse the frankness of an early friend, it's my belief you'd rather lie than not. Hm" he looks at the cards in the chimney-glass "Invitations to dinner, proffers of muffins. Do lend me your sermon. Oh, you old impostor! you hoary old Ananias! I say, Charley, why haven't you picked out some nice girl for yours truly? One with lauds and beeves, with rents and consols, mark you?
Soames went up to the bedside and stroked his father's hand which had emerged from under the bedclothes, long and wrinkled with veins. "Mark my words!" said James, "consols will go to par. For all I know, Val may go and enlist." "Oh, come, James!" cried Emily, "you talk as if there were danger." Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.
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