cently. 'It's the worst thing for the liver--and you look to
me as if you had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You'll make
yourself happier and others too.' And all he had to do was to write a
cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!

"The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us already.
The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and the others.
But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate's--and one could
picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting.
I always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him.

"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity. I
flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he was
taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he was
driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them,
prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio.
When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of
a hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And the
resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn't eat as much as
a mouthful of his melons--had lived for years on buttermilk and toast.
'But, after all, it's my only hobby--why shouldn't I indulge it?' he
said sentimentally. As if I'd ever been able to indulge any of mine! On
the keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like gods...

"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to drag
herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the afternoon
with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September afternoon--a day to
lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one's eyes on the sky, and let the
cosmic harmonies rush through one. Perhaps the vision was suggested
by the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph's hideous black walnut
library, I passed one of the under-gardeners, a handsome full-throated
Italian, who dashed out in such a hurry that he nearly knocked me down.
I remember thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I had often seen
about the melon-houses, did not bow to me, or even seem to see me.

"Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows, his
fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number of the
Churchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon--the
fattest melon I'd ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured the ecstasy
of contemplation from which I