a hundred and fifty." He hung his head, and pretended
not to notice that I was taking out my own cigar.

"Well, what's a hundred and fifty to you?" I rejoined. "You talk as if
you had to live on a book-keeper's salary, with a large family to
support."

He smiled nervously and twirled the ring on his thin finger. "I know--I
know--that's all very well. But for twenty tables that I _don't_ buy I
can send some fellow abroad and unseal his eyes."

"Oh, hang it, do both!" I exclaimed impatiently; but the writing-table
was never bought. The library remained as it was, and so did the
contention between Halidon and myself, as to whether this inconsistent
acceptance of his surroundings was due, on our friend's part, to a
congenital inability to put his hand in his pocket, or to a real
unconsciousness of the ugliness that happened to fall inside his point
of vision.

"But he owned that the table was ugly," I agreed.

"Yes, but not till you'd called his attention to the fact; and I'll
wager he became unconscious of it again as soon as your back was
turned."

"Not before he'd had time to look at a lot of others, and make up his
mind that he couldn't afford to buy one."

"That was just his excuse. He'd rather be thought mean than insensible
to ugliness. But the truth is that he doesn't mind the table and is
used to it. He knows his way about the drawers."

"But he could get another with the same number of drawers."

"Too much trouble," argued Halidon.

"Too much money," I persisted.

"Oh, hang it, now, if he were mean would he have founded three
travelling scholarships and be planning this big Academy of Arts?"

"Well, he's mean to himself, at any rate."

"Yes; and magnificently, royally generous to all the world besides!"
Halidon exclaimed with one of his great flushes of enthusiasm.

But if, on the whole, the last word remained with Halidon, and
Ambrose's personal chariness seemed a trifling foible compared to his
altruistic breadth of intention, yet neither of us could help
observing, as time went on, that the habit of thrift was beginning to
impede the execution of his schemes of art-philanthropy. The three
travelling scholarships had been founded in the first blaze of his
ardour, and before the personal management of his property had awakened
in him the sleeping instincts of parsimony. But as his capital
accumulated, and problems of investment and considerations of interest
began to encroach upon his visionary