certainly not forgotten Miss Pillenger. On his desk beside the
letters lay a little pile of notes, amounting in all to five hundred
pounds--her legacy.

Miss Pillenger was always business-like. She sat down in her chair,
opened her notebook, moistened her pencil, and waited expectantly for
Mr Meggs to clear his throat and begin work on the butterflies. She was
surprised when, instead of frowning, as was his invariable practice
when bracing himself for composition, he bestowed upon her a sweet,
slow smile.

All that was maidenly and defensive in Miss Pillenger leaped to arms
under that smile. It ran in and out among her nerve-centres. It had
been long in arriving, this moment of crisis, but here it undoubtedly
was at last. After twenty years an employer was going to court disaster
by trying to flirt with her.

Mr Meggs went on smiling. You cannot classify smiles. Nothing lends
itself so much to a variety of interpretations as a smile. Mr Meggs
thought he was smiling the sad, tender smile of a man who, knowing
himself to be on the brink of the tomb, bids farewell to a faithful
employee. Miss Pillenger's view was that he was smiling like an
abandoned old rip who ought to have been ashamed of himself.

'No, Miss Pillenger,' said Mr Meggs, 'I shall not work this morning. I
shall want you, if you will be so good, to post these six letters for
me.'

Miss Pillenger took the letters. Mr Meggs surveyed her tenderly.

'Miss Pillenger, you have been with me a long time now. Six years, is
it not? Six years. Well, well. I don't think I have ever made you a
little present, have I?'

'You give me a good salary.'

'Yes, but I want to give you something more. Six years is a long time.
I have come to regard you with a different feeling from that which the
ordinary employer feels for his secretary. You and I have worked
together for six long years. Surely I may be permitted to give you some
token of my appreciation of your fidelity.' He took the pile of notes.
'These are for you, Miss Pillenger.'

He rose and handed them to her. He eyed her for a moment with all the
sentimentality of a man whose digestion has been out of order for over
two decades. The pathos of the situation swept him away. He bent over
Miss Pillenger, and kissed her on the forehead.

Smiles excepted, there is nothing so hard to classify as a kiss. Mr
Meggs's notion was that he kissed Miss Pillenger much as some great
general, wounded unto death, might have k