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"Indefinitely! It's a weak word, sir, a weak word. Eternally —
that's the word, sir. Ted, rush these things through, and send them to
the gentleman's address without any waste of time. Let the minor
customers wait. Put down the gentleman's address and —"
"I'm changing my quarters. I will drop in and leave the new
address".
"Quite right, sir, quite right. One moment — let me show you
out, sir. There — good-bye, sir, good-bye".
Well, don't you see what was to happen? I began buying
whatever I wanted, and asking for change. Within a week I was fully
equipped with all desirable comforts and luxuries, and was housed in
an expensive hotel. I took my dinners there, but for breakfast I went
to Harris's modest eating-house where I had got my first meal on my
million-pound bill. The fact had become known that the foreign
eccentric who carried million-pound bills in his vest-pockets was
patron of the place. That was enough. From being a poor, struggling
little enterprise, it had become celebrated and overcrowded with
customers. Harris was so grateful that he forced loans upon me, and
would not be denied; and so pauper as I was, I had money to spend,
and was living like the rich and the great.
I had become one of the celebrities of the city, and it turned my
head. You could not take up a newspaper. English, Scotch, or Irish,
without finding in it one or more mentions of the "vest-pocket
million-pounder" and his latest doings and sayings.
You know, I even kept my old suit of rags and every now and
then appeared in them, so as to have the old pleasure of buying trifles,
and being insulted, and then shooting the mocker dead with a million-
pound bill. But I couldn't keep that up. The illustrated papers made
the outfit so familiar that when I went out in it I was at once
recognized and followed by a crowd, and if I attempted to buy
something the man would offer me his whole shop on credit before I
could show him the note.
The American ambassador invited me to his dinner-party.
There were fourteen guests, among them his daughter's friend, an
English girl of twenty-two, named Portia Langham, with whom I fell
in love in two minutes, and she with me — I could see it. There was
still another guest, an American, who said to me with an embarrassed
look:
"I beg your pardon, sir, I thought I knew you".