75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

Well? You were saying—’

�Only that I have taken a fancy – perhaps a foolish fancy – to this place of yours, and I’ll give you, if you like, all that you have spent upon it.’

�Well,’ he replied reflectively, but with a little twinkle in his eye, �that seems handsome. But the place isn’t really worth the half that I spent upon it. Anybody would tell you that. Come, let us be honest, whatever we are. I’ll tell you a better way. We will put the matter into the hands of Bellamy. He knows what a coffee plantation is worth.

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 – 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.