“It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one of his own melons—­the pale-fleshed English kind.  His life, apathetic and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable warm ventilated atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries.  The cardinal rule of his existence was not to let himself be ‘worried.’ . .  I remember his advising me to try it myself, one day when I spoke to him about Kate’s bad health, and her need of a change.  ’I never let myself worry,’ he said complacently.  ’It’s the worst thing for the liver—­and you look to me as if you had a liver.  Take my advice and be cheerful.  You’ll make yourself happier and others too.’  And all he had to do was to write a cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!

“The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us already.  The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and the others.  But his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate’s—­and one could picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting.  I always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him.

“Well, I tried to see if I couldn’t reach him through his vanity.  I flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons.  And he was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour.  On fine days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio.  When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost.  And the resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn’t eat as much as a mouthful of his melons—­had lived for years on buttermilk and toast.  ’But, after all, it’s my only hobby—­why shouldn’t I indulge it?’ he said sentimentally.  As if I’d ever been able to indulge any of mine!  On the keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like gods...

“One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to drag herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the afternoon with cousin Joseph.  It was a lovely soft September afternoon—­a day to lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one’s eyes on the sky, and let the cosmic harmonies rush through one.  Perhaps the vision was suggested by the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph’s hideous black walnut library, I passed one of the under-gardeners, a handsome full-throated Italian, who dashed out in such a hurry that he nearly knocked me down.  I remember thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I had often seen about the melon-houses, did not bow to me, or even seem to see me.

“Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows, his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number of the Churchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon—­the fattest melon I’d ever seen.  As I looked at it I pictured the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must have roused him, and congratulated myself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made up my mind to ask him a favour.  Then I noticed that his face, instead of looking as calm as an egg-shell, was distorted and whimpering—­and without stopping to greet me he pointed passionately to the melon.