om a brass bottle in
which he'd been shut up for nearly three thousand years? Look at it how
you will, it's _not_ convincing. I fancy I can guess what he'd say. And
what an ass I should look! Then suppose the thing got into the papers?"

Got into the papers? Why, of course it would get into the papers. As if
it were possible in these days for a young and hitherto unemployed
architect suddenly to surround himself with wondrous carpets, and gold
vessels, and gigantic jewels without attracting the notice of some
enterprising journalist. He would be interviewed; the story of his
curiously acquired riches would go the round of the papers; he would
find himself the object of incredulity, suspicion, ridicule. In
imagination he could already see the headlines on the news-sheets:

BOTTLED BILLIONS

AMAZING ARABESQUES BY AN ARCHITECT

HE SAYS THE JAR CONTAINED A JINNEE

SENSATIONAL STORY

DIVERTING DETAILS

And so on, through every phrase of alliterative ingenuity. He ground his
teeth at the mere thought of it. Then Sylvia would come to hear of it,
and what would _she_ think? She would naturally be repelled, as any
nice-minded girl would be, by the idea that her lover was in secret
alliance with a supernatural being. And her father and mother--would
they allow her to marry a man, however rich, whose wealth came from such
a questionable source? No one would believe that he had not made some
unholy bargain before consenting to set this incarcerated spirit
free--he, who had acted in absolute ignorance, who had persistently
declined all reward after realising what he had done!

No, it was too much. Try as he might to do justice to the Jinnee's
gratitude and generosity, he could not restrain a bitter resentment at
the utter want of consideration shown in overloading him with gifts so
useless and so compromising. No Jinnee--however old, however unfamiliar
with the world as it is now--had any right to be such a fool!

And at this, above the ramparts of sacks and bales, which occupied all
the available space in the room, appeared Mrs. Rapkin's face.

"I was going to ask you, sir, before them parcels came," she began,
with a dry cough of disapproval, "what you would like in the way of
ongtray to-morrow night. I thought if I could find a sweetbread at all
reasonable----"

To Horace--surrounded as he was by incalculable riches--sweetbreads
seemed incongruous just then; the transit