His Grace — page 44: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

38 IIS GRACE. cousin’s possession, and he may have done well to purchase a large house and furniture in Berkeley Square which happened to be in the market just then; but I should have been better pleased if he had waited a while before treating himself to a five-hun- dred-ton steam yacht anda deer-forest in Scotland, while his casual intimation that he proposed ere long to set up a racing-stable filled me with dismay. It was not that there was anything out of the way ina man of his income owning such luxuries—or, at all events, some of them; only, his uncle having left him literally without one penny in hard cash, I did not see how houses and yachts and deer-forests, not to speak of racing-studs, were to be paid for without the negotiation of a considerable loan. Now, the negotia- tion of loans did not come within the scope of my de- partment, so that I had to content myself with warn- ing him that, so far as I could calculate the cost of his present scale of living, his bankers’ book would show but a small balance at the end of the year. He replied by return of post that that was first-rate. ‘“ Balance in- deed! Who wants a big balance?” he asked; and as’ I read the words I seemed to hear the jolly laugh with which they had been written. Hurstbourne has a clear, ringing laugh which I would defy the most saturnine of mortals to resist. When he indulges in it he shuts his eyes and throws back his head, displaying a fine double row of white teeth, and in another moment everybody within ear-shot of him has begun to grin or chuckle. No doubt he was at that time doing a great deal towards pro- moting the general hilarity in London; for, judging by the reports which penetrated to our northern re- EGomichboo “S (E(0)