She had me lashed to the mast.

“May I inquire,” my wife continued with the breath of winter in her tones, “why it’s all going out and nothing coming in?  Have you begun so soon to lead a double life?”

Mother, call your baby boy back home!  If Uncle Peter would only drop in, or Tacks or Aunt Martha or even the janitor!

Suddenly it occurred to me: 

“Dearie,” I said, “you have surprised my secret, and now nothing remains but the pleasure of telling you everything.”

A thaw set in.

“As you have stated, not incorrectly, my dear, large bundles of Green Fellows have severed their home ties and tiptoed into the elsewhere,” I continued, gradually getting my nerve back.

The thermometer continued to go up.

“Clara J., on several occasions you have expressed a desire to leave this torn-up city and retire to the woodlands, haven’t you?” I asked.

She nodded and the weather grew warmer.

“Once you said to me, ’Oh, John, if they’d only take New York off the operating table and give the poor city a chance to get well, how nice it would be!’—­didn’t you?”

Another nod.

“Well,” I said, backing Munchausen in a corner and dragging his medals away from him, “that’s the answer, You for the Burbs!  You for the chateau up the track!  Henceforth, you for the cage in the country where the daffydowndillys sing in the treetops and buttercups chirp from bough to bough!”

“Oh, John!” she exclaimed, faint with delight; “do you really mean you’ve bought a home in the country?  How perfectly lovely!  You, dear, dear, old John!  And that’s what you’ve been doing with all your money, just to surprise me!  Bless your dear good heart!  Oh!  I’m so glad, and so delighted.  Won’t it be simply grand?”

I could feel the cold, spectral form of Sapphira leaning over my left shoulder, urging me on.

“What is it like?  How many rooms?  Where is it?” she inquired, all in one breath.

Where was the blamed thing?  What did it look like?  How did I know?  She could search me.  I could feel my ears getting red.  Presently I braced and mumbled, “No more details till the castle is completed, then I’ll coax you out there and let you revel.”

“How soon will that be?” she asked, “To-morrow?  Yes, John, to-morrow?”

“No,” I whispered croupily, “in—­in about a week.”

I wanted time to arrange my earthly affairs.

“Oh! lovely!” she said, and kissing me rushed away to break the news to mother.

I felt like a rain check after the sun comes out.

Suddenly Hope tugged at my heart strings and I remembered that I had a week in which to beat the ponies to a pulp and win out enough coin to buy six Swiss Cheese cottages in the country.

Day after day I waded in among the jelly fish at the track but the best I ever got was an $8 win.