in this
way--climbing mountains, and shooting hyenas, and saving money, the
Duke's place or seat, Dulham Towers, was practically shut up, with no
one in it but servants and housekeepers and gamekeepers and tourists;
and the picture galleries, except for artists and visitors and
villagers, were closed; and the town house, except for the presence of
servants and tradesmen and secretaries, was absolutely shut. But the
Duke knew that rigid parsimony of this sort, if kept up for a
generation or two, will work wonders, and this sustained him; and the
Duchess knew it, and it sustained her; in fact, all the ducal family,
knowing that it was only a matter of a generation or two, took their
misfortune very cheerfully.

The only thing that bothered the Duke was borrowing money. This was
necessary from time to time when loans or mortgages fell in, but he
hated it. It was beneath him. His ancestors had often taken money, but
had never borrowed it, and the Duke chafed under the necessity. There
was something about the process that went against the grain. To sit
down in pleasant converse with a man, perhaps almost a gentleman, and
then lead up to the subject and take his money from him, seemed to the
Duke's mind essentially low. He could have understood knocking a man
over the head with a fire shovel and taking his money, but not
borrowing it.

So the Duke had come to America, where borrowing is notoriously easy.
Any member of the Mausoleum Club, for instance, would borrow fifty
cents to buy a cigar, or fifty thousand dollars to buy a house, or five
millions to buy a railroad with complete indifference, and pay it back,
too, if he could, and think nothing of it. In fact, ever so many of the
Duke's friends were known to have borrowed money in America with
magical ease, pledging for it their seats or their pictures, or one of
their daughters--anything.

So the Duke knew it must be easy. And yet, incredible as it may seem,
he had spent four days in New York, entertained everywhere, and made
much of, and hadn't borrowed a cent. He had been asked to lunch in a
Riverside palace, and, fool that he was, had come away without so much
as a dollar to show for it. He had been asked to a country house on the
Hudson, and, like an idiot--he admitted it himself--hadn't asked his
host for as much as his train fare. He had been driven twice round
Central Park in a motor and had been taken tamely back to his hotel not
a dollar the richer. The thing