d, lifting up the
blotting-paper, "is a copy of Snapshots. I'm fighting it off as long as
I can. The fact is I've a sale this afternoon. I thought if I could
last until after that it might not be a bad thing."

"How's the biz?" Burton asked with a touch of his old jauntiness.
"Going strong, eh?"

"Not so good and not so bad," Mr. Waddington admitted. "We've got over
that boom that started at first when people didn't understand things.
They seem to regard me now with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.
All the same, we get a good many outside buyers in, and we've pulled
along all right up till now. It's been the best few months of my life,"
Mr. Waddington continued, "by a long way, but I'm getting scared, and
that's a fact."

"How many beans have you left?" Burton inquired.

"Four," Mr. Waddington replied. "What I shall do when they've gone I
can't imagine."

Burton held his head for a moment a little wearily.

"There are times," he confessed, "especially when one's sort of between
the two things like this, when I can't see my way ahead at all. Do you
know that last night the man with whom I have been staying--a man of
education too, who has been a professor at Oxford University,--and
another, a more commercial sort of Johnny, offered me a third
partnership in a great enterprise for putting on the market a new mental
health-food, if I would give them one of the beans for analysis. They
were convinced that we should make millions."

Mr. Waddington was evidently struck with the idea.

"It's a great scheme," he said hesitatingly. "I suppose last night it
occurred to you that it was just a trifle--eh?--just a trifle vulgar?"
he asked tentatively.

Burton assented gloomily.

"Last night," he declared, "it seemed to me like a crime. It made me
shiver all over while they talked of it. To-day, well, I'm half glad
and I'm half sorry that they're not here. If they walked into this
office now I'd swallow a bean as quickly as I could, but I tell you
frankly, Mr. Waddington, that at the present moment it seems entirely
reasonable to me. Money, after all, is worth having, isn't it?--a nice
comfortable sum so that one could sit back and just have a good time.
Don't stare at me like that. Of course, I'm half ashamed of what I'm
saying. There's the other part pulling and tugging away all the time
makes me feel inclined to kick myself, but I can't help it. I know that
these half formed ideas of enjoyment by means of wealth a