to congratulate you on one thing."

"Ah! What's that--my sang-froid, my nerve?" I asked, airily.

"No, the size of your hands," said Henriette. "The superficial area of
those palms of yours has been worth ten thousand dollars to us to-day."

V

THE ADVENTURE OF THE STEEL BONDS

"Excuse me, Henriette," said I one morning, after I had been in Mrs. Van
Raffles's employ for about three months and had begun to calculate as to
my share of the profits. "What are you doing with all this money we are
gradually accumulating? There must be pretty near a million in hand by
this time--eh?"

"One million two hundred and eighty-seven thousand five hundred and
twenty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents," replied Henriette instantly.
"It's a tidy little sum."

"Almost enough to retire on," I suggested.

"Now, Bunny, stop that!" retorted Henriette. "Either stop it or else
retire yourself. I am not what they call a quitter in this country, and
I do not propose at the very height of my career to give up a business
which I have struggled for years to establish."

"That is all very well, Henriette," said I. "But the pitcher that goes
to the bat too often strikes out at last." (I had become a baseball
fiend during my sojourn in the States.) "A million dollars is a pot of
money, and it's my advice to you to get away with it as soon as you
can."

"Excuse me, Bunny, but when did I ever employ you to give advice?"
demanded Henriette. "It is quite evident that you don't understand me.
Do you suppose for an instant that I am robbing these people here in
Newport merely for the vulgar purpose of acquiring money? If you do you
have a woful misconception of the purposes which actuate an artist."

"You certainly are an artist, Henriette," I answered, desirous of
placating her.

"Then you should know better than to intimate that I am in this business
for the sordid dollars and cents there are to be got out of it," pouted
my mistress. "Mr. Vauxhall Bean doesn't chase the aniseseed bag because
he loves to shed the aniseseed or hungers for bags as an article of
food. He does it for the excitement of the hunt; because he loves to
feel the movement of the hunter that he sits so well between his knees;
because he is enamoured of the baying of the hounds, the winding of the
horn, and welcomes the element of personal danger that enters into the
sport when he and his charger have to take an unusual fence or an extra
broad watercourse. So wit