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as a camera?" he said. "Its needs are, I consider, even greater. Presumably this gift is meant to facilitate my smoking, but an empty cigarette-case offers me nothing to smoke—it implies the heavy responsibility on an already overburdened man of keeping it filled. Now, suppose you complete the gift, as I did Jane's, by at least a year's endowment?"

I began to wish that the cigarette-cases had perished, but after his kindness to Jane I could hardly refuse.

"Well, what would it cost?" I said. "That's easily reckoned," said Jane's uncle. "Say I smoke on an average fifteen cigarettes a day—that 's 105 a week—that's——— Have you a piece of paper?"

It worked out at just under 5,500 cigarettes a year. At 8s. a hundred, twenty guineas would just cover the year's endowment. It seemed out of all proportion to the cost of the case.

"It's a good deal more than Jane's camera got," I protested.

"I told you its claims were greater. Of course you can't expect to get off as cheaply with a fixed habit of maturity as with the passing caprice of a kid. On the other hand you might have done worse. Suppose you had given me golf-clubs—there'd have been golf-balls, caddies, club subscription, lunches, fares and postage on correspondence with The Times. Compared with that, what is a paltry five guineas a quarter?"

On reflection I found that very few presents would have escaped the endowment scheme altogether, and that the cigarette-case was really a comparatively modest pensioner, and I felt a little comforted.

For four quarters I remitted five guineas to Jane's uncle.

My present seemed to change his nature. Whereas he had been a man rather to ignore the claims of clothes than to consider them, I now noticed that he looked more prosperous and was better dressed than I had ever seen him before. Once, when he appeared in a new lounge suit—the second new one within my knowledge in six months—I could not refrain from remarking on it.

"One has to dress up to a silver cigarette-case, old fellow," he said, and the subject was dismissed.

The year was on the point of expiring. One day I way talking with Jane's uncle and another man at the Club. The other man offered me a cigarette, and to my amazement passed uncle over with these words:—

"No good offering you one, I know, poor old chap. When is your doctor going to give you a reprieve?"

"I don't know," he said sadly, taking a pinch of snuff.

"What does this mean?" I said when we were alone. "What about the endowment at the rate of fifteen cigarettes a day?"

"A parallel case to Jane's," he answered. "There seems something fatal about these endowments. Three days after you bad agreed to endow the cigarette-case my doctor forbade me, on pain of some awful 'itis,' to exceed three cigarettes a day. With the first instalment you had provided me with cigarettes for the year. So what should I do in these circumstances but follow the precedent set by your family? Only, instead of a dormouse and a stamp-album, I chose to purchase smartness. I spent the three remaining instalments on my wardrobe."

*****

It was my birthday yesterday. Jane's uncle sent me a handsome silver-mounted walking-stick. "It is the only thing I can think of that requires no endowment," he wrote. "Pavements are supplied by the County Council, I and you have an umbrella-stand."

I should like to use it across his back.

First Lady. "I see the master cutting a dash this morning. Nobody wouldn’t think he was hard up."

Second Lady. "Lor' bless yer, no! Since this 'ere Merrytorium come in he walks down the high street in front of all the shops as though he didn't owe 'em a penny."