The Lady and the Lord | Page 6

be a friend of my late husband. Before my husband died he had promised him that he would look after me, and this was his way of doing it. He had told me to raise every cent I could, and buy certain shares and hold them for a rise.
"Lord Tipperary got awfully excited. He hadn't ever gambled on the Stock Exchange, and the idea of doing it simply tickled him to death. He wanted to know the name of the shares at once, so that he could 'go up to town and get the money on.' He said it was 'awfully sporting' of me to want to 'put all my money on one horse,' and he didn't like it in the least when I refused to tell him which shares they were.
"But I couldn't tell him, for the simple reason that I didn't know the name of any shares, and I'd have to look them up first in a newspaper. So I got out of it for the time being by saying that the information had been given to me under a strict pledge of secrecy, and that I couldn't think of divulging it to anybody.
"That afternoon he drove me round to Mr. Lewisohn's office, and he introduced me properly, as he had promised to do. We had a long talk with the lawyer, but nothing much came of it, except that he promised to be as quick as he could about my business.
"Lord Tipperary asked him at once how long he thought it would be before he had my affairs settled up, and he said: 'Some weeks.' Then Lord Tipperary looked at me with the most comical expression of concern, and I had to laugh outright; and Lewisohn seemed awfully surprised that Lord Tipperary should take so much interest in my affairs, but he didn't say anything--at least, not then.
"After we left the office that boy did nothing but pester me to let him into the secret; and at dinner-time he said: 'Look here, Mrs. Crothers, it's an awful shame your not being able to get any money out of old Lewisohn for a month or two; you'll probably miss having the flutter through it. Can't we work it this way. I'll go up to town and open an account with a firm of brokers that I know of, and arrange it so that you can buy the shares on my account without my knowing the name of them; then we'll go shares in the profits. How's that?
"'Then, to-morrow morning I'll go round to old Lewisohn before I go to town, and tell him to be sure and let me have a few thousands at once, so that we sha'n't be stuck for money. He's arranging to borrow some money for me, and he can easily let me have a few thousands right away.'
"Remember, it was pounds he was talking about, and not dollars! And there was poor little me, with only a few shillings in the wide world, and a great, fat hotel-bill running up! Do you wonder I began to feel excited? Of course, I agreed to that arrangement, and the next morning I went round to the Public Library to look up Pittsburgh.
"I read up all about Pittsburgh in a fat sort of encyclopedia; and though reading about it in that book bored me almost to tears, and reminded me in some indescribable way of Monday morning's breakfast at a boarding-house--I can't tell you why, but it did!--I managed to concentrate my mind on it sufficiently to remember afterward that the National Zinc Amalgamation was one of the biggest concerns there.
"Then I went back to the hotel and sat in the lobby, studying out the financial column of a morning paper. The American papers are bad enough, if you open them at the financial page, and I don't believe the jargon they put in them really means anything at all; but the English papers are infinitely worse; and I'm sure I nearly cried trying to understand it.
"There were two different things named in one column that might, either of them, have been the Zinc Amalgamation. They were both called N.Z. Am., but one had the word 'com.' after it with a full stop, and the other had the word 'pref.' There was a foot-note at the bottom of the column which said that the 'com.' had been largely dealt in. The 'com' and the 'pref.' were quoted at different prices, and I think it was the most confusing mix-up that I ever tried to puzzle out.
"I never would have puzzled it out if it hadn't been for Bertram, the proprietor. He passed me where I was sitting in the lobby, and smiled. I asked him what he was smiling about, and he said that it was