He pursed his lips.
"I'm afraid," he said, having unpursed them, "I couldn't do it as cheap as I'd like, sir. You see, what with them having discovered the animal's absence by this time, the hue and cry, as you might say, will be up and everybody at Mr. Cook's residence on the qui vive or alert. I'd be in the position of a spy in wartime carrying secret dispatches through the enemy's lines with every eye on the look-out for him. I'd have to make it twenty pounds."
I was relieved. I had been expecting something higher. He, too, seemed to feel that he had erred on the side of moderation for he immediately added:
"Or, rather, thirty."
"Thirty!"
"Thirty, sir."
"Let's haggle," I said.
But when I suggested twenty-five, a nicer-looking sort of number than thirty, he shook his grey head regretfully, so we went on haggling, and he haggled better than me so that eventually we settled on thirty-five.
It wasn't one of my best haggling days.
(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
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