Again he offered thirty thousand pounds, to be
paid within two or three days if all went well. And then they started
haggling together as business men will.
And all the morning went by over the gardens of the Tuileries and the
afternoons came on, and only by two o'clock they arrived at an
understanding, on a basis, as they called it, of thirty thousand
guineas. And the old tail coat was brought out and spread on the
table, and they examined it together and chatted about its properties,
all the more friendly for their strenuous argument. And Santiago was
rising up to go, and Peters pleasantly holding out his hand, when a
step was heard on the stair. It echoed up to the room, the door
opened. And an elderly labouring man came stumping in. He walked
with difficulty, almost like a bather who has been swimming and
floating all morning and misses the buoyancy of the water when he has
come to land. He stumped up to the table without speaking and there at
once caught sight of the old brown coat.
"Why," he said, "that be my old coat."
And without another word he put it on. In the fierce glare of his
eyes as he fitted on that coat, carefully fastening the buttons,
buttoning up the flap of a pocket here, unbuttoning one there, neither
Peters nor Santiago found a word to say. They sat there wondering how
they had dared to bid for that brown tail coat, how they had dared to
buy it, even to touch it, they sat there silent without a single
excuse.
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