Gadgem blushed.  St. George’s democracy he could understand; but why this aristocrat—­outcast as he had once been, but now again in favor—­why this young prince, the heir to Moorlands and the first young blood of his time, should treat him as an equal, puzzled him; and yet, somehow, his heart warmed to him as he read his sincerity in his eyes and voice.

“Thank you, sir—­thank you very much, sir,” rejoined Gadgem, with a folding-camp-stool-movement, his back bent at right angles with his legs.  “I really don’t deserve it, sir.  Mr. Temple is an EXtraordinary man, sir; the most EXtraordinary man I have ever met, sir.  Give you the shirt off his back, sir, and go NAked himself.”

“Yes, he gave it to me,” laughed Harry, greatly amused at the collector’s effusive manner:  He had never seen this side of Gadgem.  “That, of course, you know all about—­you paid the bills, I believe.”

“PREcisely so, sir.”  He had lengthened out now with a spiral-spring, cork-screw twist in his body, his index finger serving as point.  “Paid every one of them.  He never cared, sir—­he GLOried in it—­GLOried in being a pauper.  UNaccountable, Mr. Rutter—­Enormously unaccountable.  Never heard of such a case; never will hear of such a case.  So what was to be done, sir?  Just what I may state is being done this minute over our heads UPstairs”:  and out went the index finger.  “Rest and REcuperation, sir—­a slow—­a very slow use of AVAILable assets until new and FURther AVAILable assets could become visible.  And they are here, sir—­have arRIVED. You may have heard, of course, of the Patapsco where Mr. Temple kept the largest part of his fortune.”

“No, except that it about ruined everybody who had anything to do with it.”

“Then you have heard nothing of the REsuscitation!” cried Gadgem, all his fingers opened like a fan, his eyebrows arched to the roots of his hair.  “You surPRISE me!  And you are really ignorant of the PHOEnix-like way in which it has RISen from its ashes?  I said RISen, sir, because it is now but a dim speck in the financial sky.  Nor the appointment of Mr. John Gorsuch as manager, ably backed by your DIStinguished father—­the setting of the bird upon its legs—­I’m speaking of the burnt bird, sir, the PHOEnix.  I’m quite sure it was a bird—­Nor the payment on the first of the ensuing month of some eighty per cent of the amounts due the ORIGinal depositors and another twenty per cent in one year thereafter—­The cancelling of the mortgage which your most BEnevolent and HONorable father bought, and the sly trick of Gorsuch—­letting Fogbin, who never turned up, become the sham tenant—­and the joy—­”

“Hold on Mr. Gadgem—­I’m not good at figures.  Give me that over again and speak slower.  Am I to understand that the bank will pay back to my uncle, within a day or so, three-quarters of the money they stole from him?”