certainly the way to accomplish things--the
modern millionaire's way; but the majority of people had to do a little
waiting before they could enjoy their vine and fig-tree.

Cardross sat down beside his wife, who was reading in a hammock chair,
and gazed at the new vista through a pair of field-glasses.

"Gad, Hamil!" he said with considerable feeling, "I hate to see a noble
tree go down; it's like murder to me. But it's the only thing to do,
isn't it? The French understand the value of magnificent distances. What
a glorious vista that will make, four miles straight away walled in by
deathless green, and the blue lagoon sparkling at the end of the
perspective! I love it, I tell you. I love it!"

"It will be very fine," said Hamil. His voice sounded a trifle tired. He
had ridden many miles since sunrise. There was marl on his
riding-breeches.

Cardross continued to examine the work in progress through his
binoculars. Presently he said:

"You've been overdoing it, haven't you, Hamil? My wife says so."

"Overdoing it?" repeated the young man, not understanding. "Overdoing
what?"

"I mean you've a touch of malaria; you've been working a little too
hard."

"He has indeed," drawled Mrs. Cardross, laying aside her novel; and,
placidly ignoring Hamil's protests: "Neville, you drag him about through
those dreadful swamps before he is acclimated, and you keep him up half
the night talking plans and making sketches. He is too young to work
like that."

Hamil turned red; but it was impossible to resent or mistake the kindly
solicitude of this very large and leisurely lady whose steadily
increasing motherly interest in him had at times tried his dignity in
that very lively family.

That he was already a successful young man with a metropolitan
reputation made little or no impression upon her. He was young, alone,
and she liked him better and better every day until that liking arrived
at the point where his physical welfare began to preoccupy her. So she
sent maids to his room with nourishing broths at odd and unexpected
moments, and she presented him with so many boxes of quinine that their
disposal became a problem until Shiela took them off his hands and
replaced them in her mother's medicine chest, whence, in due time, they
returned again as gifts to Hamil.

"Dear Mrs. Cardross," he said, taking a vacant chair beside her hammock,
"I really am perfectly well and perfectly acclimated, and I enjoy every
moment of the