His Grace — page 182: what you’re looking at

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

176 HIS GRACE. IT assured her that I could perfectly well doubt it; added to which, I had duties to perform where I was. Her suggestion struck me as eminently feminine and unpractical ; it was no part of my avocations to cling to the tail of a donkey who was bent upon precipitating himself over a cliff, and so I told her. Yet, when, in the beginning of May, I received a somewhat urgent letter from Hurstbourne, begging me to run up to Berkeley Square for a few days, as he was anxious to consult me upon matters of business, I could not do otherwise than obey the summons. “Now mind, Phil,” was Nora’s parting injunction to me, “‘ you are not to hurry back on my account. I shall be very well taken care care of by the servants, and you will probably find that the duke is in much greater need of being taken care of than I am.” That was a probability which was not to be con- tested ; but I had little expectation of finding Hurst- bourne in a mood to be influenced by any wise advice of mine; nor, as a matter of fact, could I induce him to listen for a moment to the statement upon which I embarked as soon as he had done telling me what pleasure it gave him to see me again and what a good fellow I was to have come so promptly when I wa called. | “Yes, yes, my dear chap,” he interrupted; “but I really haven’t time to go into figures now. I must be off in a minute, and there are people coming to dinner, and after that I shall have to look in at half a dozen places. To-morrow morning, though, we’ll have a palaver, and then you and the lawyers had better meet and try to muddle things out somehow among you; I’ll be hanged if 7 can make head or tail of them!” Gomichboo m