The  Duke  became  so  interested  in  these  topics
and  in  explaining  that  while  he  had  never  been
a  Litde  Englandcr  he  had  always  been  a  Big
Turk,  and  that  he  stood  for  a  Small  Bulgaria
and  a  Restricted  Austria,  that  he  got  further
and  further  away  from  the  topic  of  money,
which  was  what  he  really  wanted  to  come  to;
and  the  Duke  rose  from  his  conversations  with
a  look  of  such  obvious  distress  on  his  face  that

31


Arcadian  Adventures  with  the  Idle  Rich

everybody  realised  that  his  anxiety  about  Eng-
land was  killing  him.
And  then  suddenly  light  had  come.  It  was
on  his  fourth  day  in  New  York  that  he  unex-
pectedly ran  into  the  Viscount  Belstairs  (they
had  been  together  as  young  men  in  Nigeria,
and  as  middle-aged  men  in  St.  Petersburg),
and  Belstairs,  who  was  in  abundant  spirits  and
who  was  returning  to  England  on  the  Glori-
tania  at  noon  the  next  day,  explained  to  the
Duke  that  he  had  just  borrowed  fifty  thousand
pounds,  on  security  that  wouldn't  be  worth  a
halfpenny  in  England.
And  the  Duke  said  with  a  sigh,  "How  the
deuce  do  you  do  it,  Belstairs?"

"Do  what?"

"Borrow  it,"  said  the  Duke.  "How  do  you
manage  to  get  people  to  talk  about  it?  Here  I
am  wanting  to  borrow  a  hundred  thousand,  and
I'm  hanged  if  I  can  even  find  an  opening."

At  which  the  Viscount  had  said,  "Pooh,
pooh!  you  don't  need  any  opening.  Just  bor-
row it  straight  out — ask  for  it  across  a  dinner
table,  just  as  you'd  ask  for  a  match ;  they  think
nothing  of  it  here."

"Across  the  dinner  table?"  repeated  the
Duke,  who  was  a  literal  man.
