Achmed Abdullah

“ Higgins was an honored guest at Dealle Castle and lent themselves to their share of the entertaining with good enough grace. They belonged to the same regiment, the Ninety-Second Dragoons, of which their father was the retired colonel and the history of which was intimately connected with that of Britain's Oriental dominions; and they thought that the verbal and social vagaries of the eccentric Cockney-South-African millionaire would make good telling at regimental mess, over the famous crusty port which had once reposed in the cellars of Napoleon the First. ”

“ Preserved Higgins startled him wide awake:
“Go'blyme! No wonder I'm losin' my plurry pants! S'y—these 'ere cards ...”
“What is the matter with them?” Hector cut in sternly, threateningly leaning across the table, his dark, hawkish features, as they came within the radius of the low-hanging lamp, suffused with a terrible, corroding rage—the sudden, killing rage of the Wades of Dealle.
Wot's the matter with them?” sneered the millionaire. “I'll tell you wot's the bloomin' matter with them, cully! They're marked! Somebody's been cheatin'!” ”

“ But—well—the creature has money, frightful, vulgar heaps of money, and my agent writes me he's willing to plop down a stiffish lot of the ready for the proper sort o' country estate, with ancestral portraits and ancestral defective plumbing and ancestral family spook all complete. ”