30 лучших рассказов британских писателей / 30 Best British Short Stories

He shall name a price, and if we can agree upon that, we will make a deal of it.’

The other man changed colour. He wanted to settle the thing at once as between gentlemen. What need of third parties? But Reginald stood firm, and he presently rode away, quite sure that in a day or two this planter, too, would have heard the news.

A month later, the young coffee-planter stood on the deck of a steamer homeward bound. In his pocket-book was a plan of his auriferous estate; in a bag hanging round his neck was a small collection of yellow nuggets; in his boxes was a chosen assortment of quartz.

Act III

�Well, sir,’ said the financier, �you’ve brought this thing to me. You want my advice. Well, my advice is, don’t fool away the only good thing that will ever happen to you. Luck such as this doesn’t come more than once in a lifetime.’

�I have been offered ten thousand pounds for my estate.’

�Oh! Have you! Ten thousand? That was very liberal – very liberal indeed.

Ten thousand for a gold reef!’

�But I thought as an old friend of my father you would, perhaps–’

�Young man, don’t fool it away. He’s waiting for you, I suppose, round the corner, with a bottle of fizz, ready to close.’

�He is.’

�Well, go and drink his champagne. Always get whatever you can. And then tell him that you’ll see him –’

�I certainly will, sir, if you advise it. And then?’

�And then – leave it to me. And, young man, I think I heard, a year or two ago, something about you and my girl Rosie.

’

�There was something, sir. Not enough to trouble you about it.’

�She told me. Rosie tells me all her love affairs.’

�Is she – is she unmarried?’

�Oh, yes! and for the moment I believe she is free. She has had one or two engagements, but, somehow, they have come to nothing. There was the French count, but that was knocked on the head very early in consequence of things discovered. And there was the Boom in Guano, but he fortunately smashed, much to Rosie’s joy, because she never liked him.

The last was Lord Evergreen. He was a nice old chap when you could understand what he said, and Rosie would have liked the title very much, though his grandchildren opposed the thing. Well, sir, I suppose you couldn’t understand the trouble we took to keep that old man alive for his own wedding. Science did all it could, but ’twas of no use–’ The financier sighed.