it here and watch people and see the silly things they do. That
young boy you sit at table with--he won't come to any good. Silly! He
thinks my wife likes him, but she doesn't; it's just that she must have
her mind taken off, you know, at times, poor thing. I like to see her
amused."

"And what about you?" asked Winn. "It seems to me she might better spend
some of her time amusing you."

Mr. Bouncing pointed to the "Pink 'Un."

"I've got plenty to amuse me," he explained, "and you mustn't think she
doesn't look after me. Why, the other day--when I had the high
temperature, you know, and stayed in my room--she came to the door after
she'd been skating, and said, 'Still coughing?' That shows she noticed I
was worse, doesn't it?"

"I'm sure she must be awfully anxious about you," Winn assented with
more kindliness than truth. "But do you care for her knocking about so
with young Rivers and that chap Roper? It seems to me she's too young
and too pretty. If I were you, I'd call her in a bit; I would really."

Mr. Bouncing leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. This always
made Winn a little uneasy, for when Mr. Bouncing's eyes were shut it was
so difficult to tell whether he was alive or dead. However, after a few
minutes he opened them.

"They are five minutes late with my hot milk," he said. "Do you mind
just getting up and touching the bell? And you've got such a sharp way
of speaking to waiters, perhaps you wouldn't mind hauling him over the
coals for me when he comes?" Winn complied with this request rapidly and
effectively, and the hot milk appeared as if by magic.

Mr. Bouncing drank some before he returned to the subject of his wife.

"Yes," he said, "I dare say you would call her in. You're the kind of
man who can make people come in when you call. I'm not. Besides, you
see, she's young; she's got her life to live, and, then, ought I to have
married her at all? Of course I was wonderfully well at the time; I
could walk several miles, I remember, and had no fever to speak of.
Still, there were the symptoms. She took the risk, of course--she was
one of a large family, and I had money--but it hasn't been very amusing
for her, you must admit."

Winn didn't admit it, because it seemed to him as if it had been
extremely amusing for Mrs. Bouncing, a great deal more amusing than it
had any right to be.

"Perhaps you think she oughtn't to have married for money," Mr. Bouncing
went on when he had finished the