unning him'--doing it
for him; wants him to get on, you know--just as I do you."

Terry gave me a quick glance; but my face (which is blond and said to be
singularly youthful for a man of twenty-nine) was, I flatter myself, as
innocent as that of a choir-boy who has just delivered himself of a high
soprano note. Nevertheless, the end was coming. I felt it in the
electric tingle of the air.

"Do you mind telling me your friend's name, or is he a secret?"

"Perhaps the address at the end of the advertisement will be
enlightening."

Terry had dropped the paper on the grass by the side of his _chaise
longue_, but now he picked it up again, and began searching for the
place which he had lost. I, in my _chaise longue_ under the same
magnolia tree, gazed at him from under my tilted Panama. Terry is tall
and dark. Stretched out in the basket chair, he looked very big and
rather formidable. Beside him, I felt a small and reedy person. I really
hoped he would not give me much trouble. The day was too hot to cope
with troublesome people, especially if you were fond of them, for then
you were the more likely to lose your head.

But the beginning was not encouraging. Terry proceeded to read the end
of the advertisement aloud. "Address X. Y. Z., Chalet des Pins, Cap
Martin." Then he said something which did not go at all with the
weather. Why is it that so many bad words begin with D or H? One almost
gets to think that they are letters for respectable people to avoid.

"Hang it all, Ralph," he went on, after the explosion, "I must say I
don't like your taste in jokes. This is a bit too steep."

I sat up straight, with a leg on each side of the chair, and looked
reproaches. "I thought," I said slowly, "that when your brother behaved
like such a--well, we won't specify what--you asked, I might even say
begged, for my advice, and promised in a midnight conversation under
this very tree to take it, no matter how disagreeable it might prove."

"I did; but--"

"There's no such word as 'but.' Last year I advised you not to put your
money into West Africans. You put it in. What was the consequence? You
regretted it, and as your brother showed no very keen interest in your
career, you decided that you couldn't afford to stop in the Guards, so
you cut the Army. This year I advised you not to play that system of
yours and Raleigh's at Monte Carlo, or if you must have a go at it, to
stick to roulette and five franc stakes. Instead of l