e whole
thing over to Harold, to retire, and to spend his time enjoying himself.
Enjoying himself! Old Mr. Neave stopped dead under a group of ancient
cabbage palms outside the Government buildings! Enjoying himself! The
wind of evening shook the dark leaves to a thin airy cackle. Sitting at
home, twiddling his thumbs, conscious all the while that his life's
work was slipping away, dissolving, disappearing through Harold's fine
fingers, while Harold smiled...

"Why will you be so unreasonable, father? There's absolutely no need
for you to go to the office. It only makes it very awkward for us when
people persist in saying how tired you're looking. Here's this huge
house and garden. Surely you could be happy in--in--appreciating it for
a change. Or you could take up some hobby."

And Lola the baby had chimed in loftily, "All men ought to have hobbies.
It makes life impossible if they haven't."

Well, well! He couldn't help a grim smile as painfully he began to climb
the hill that led into Harcourt Avenue. Where would Lola and her sisters
and Charlotte be if he'd gone in for hobbies, he'd like to know? Hobbies
couldn't pay for the town house and the seaside bungalow, and their
horses, and their golf, and the sixty-guinea gramophone in the
music-room for them to dance to. Not that he grudged them these things.
No, they were smart, good-looking girls, and Charlotte was a remarkable
woman; it was natural for them to be in the swim. As a matter of fact,
no other house in the town was as popular as theirs; no other family
entertained so much. And how many times old Mr. Neave, pushing the cigar
box across the smoking-room table, had listened to praises of his wife,
his girls, of himself even.

"You're an ideal family, sir, an ideal family. It's like something one
reads about or sees on the stage."

"That's all right, my boy," old Mr. Neave would reply. "Try one of
those; I think you'll like them. And if you care to smoke in the garden,
you'll find the girls on the lawn, I dare say."

That was why the girls had never married, so people said. They could
have married anybody. But they had too good a time at home. They were
too happy together, the girls and Charlotte. H'm, h'm! Well, well.
Perhaps so...

By this time he had walked the length of fashionable Harcourt Avenue;
he had reached the corner house, their house. The carriage gates were
pushed back; there were fresh marks of wheels on the drive. And then he
faced the