. Now,
what can a man possibly do with a thousand dollars?"

"I thought," said Old Bryson, showing as much interest as a bee
shows in a vinegar cruet, "that the late Septimus Gillian was worth
something like half a million."

"He was," assented Gillian, joyously, "and that's where the joke
comes in. He's left his whole cargo of doubloons to a microbe. That
is, part of it goes to the man who invents a new bacillus and the
rest to establish a hospital for doing away with it again. There
are one or two trifling bequests on the side. The butler and the
housekeeper get a seal ring and $10 each. His nephew gets $1,000."

"You've always had plenty of money to spend," observed Old Bryson.

"Tons," said Gillian. "Uncle was the fairy godmother as far as an
allowance was concerned."

"Any other heirs?" asked Old Bryson.

"None." Gillian frowned at his cigarette and kicked the upholstered
leather of a divan uneasily. "There is a Miss Hayden, a ward of my
uncle, who lived in his house. She's a quiet thing--musical--the
daughter of somebody who was unlucky enough to be his friend. I
forgot to say that she was in on the seal ring and $10 joke, too. I
wish I had been. Then I could have had two bottles of brut, tipped
the waiter with the ring and had the whole business off my hands.
Don't be superior and insulting, Old Bryson--tell me what a fellow
can do with a thousand dollars."

Old Bryson rubbed his glasses and smiled. And when Old Bryson smiled,
Gillian knew that he intended to be more offensive than ever.

"A thousand dollars," he said, "means much or little. One man may buy
a happy home with it and laugh at Rockefeller. Another could send
his wife South with it and save her life. A thousand dollars would
buy pure milk for one hundred babies during June, July, and August
and save fifty of their lives. You could count upon a half hour's
diversion with it at faro in one of the fortified art galleries.
It would furnish an education to an ambitious boy. I am told
that a genuine Corot was secured for that amount in an auction
room yesterday. You could move to a New Hampshire town and live
respectably two years on it. You could rent Madison Square Garden for
one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if you should have
one, on the precariousness of the profession of heir presumptive."

"People might like you, Old Bryson," said Gillian, always unruffled,
"if you wouldn't moralize. I asked you to tell me what I could do
w