furnishing the house, and since then most of his two hundred
a year had gone in expenses, for he was no niggard either with himself
or those he loved. Neither wife nor chick of his should ever lack for
anything, he had told me proudly. If a neighbour's child got some
expensive and useless contraption to pull about, Babs had one, too, the
very next week. If a neighbour's wife got a fur coat, Mrs. Evans had
orders to go and do likewise, a more expensive one if possible. What
little he had was on deposit in the bank in his wife's name, so that she
could draw on it while he was away.

"And so I came round to the unpleasant conviction that while Mrs. Evans
was silently awaiting my repudiation of the whole thing, her husband was
expecting me to use my eloquence to persuade his wife to let him invest.
They say a bachelor has no worries of his own. Which is as well, when
his married friends endeavour to make him responsible for their own
follies, and use him as a cushion to soften the family collisions. I was
an old hand and slipped out. And I really was not thinking so much of my
own two hundred pounds salted down in Home Rails, as of Jack's home,
when I said, cheerfully:

"'Well, this Captain Macedoine can't object to giving us a little more
information. And he can't expect us to have the cash with us. We shall
have to go home and sell something and--er--draw the money, eh?'

"'It is quite out of the question,' said Mrs. Evans, biting her thread
as though she was severing the spinal chord of the whole proposition.

"'So what I suggest is, Jack will see Captain Macedoine and we'll take
the voyage home to think about it.' And I looked at Mrs. Evans to
approve my machiavellian astuteness.

"'Oh, it's quite impossible, quite. I couldn't think of leaving England.
And we couldn't spare the money.'

"'We shouldn't need the house if we came out here,' said Jack, looking
solemnly at his wife. She stiffened.

"'We _can't_ sell the house,' she muttered through her teeth. 'Where
should we live? I've told you. Jack, it's quite impossible.'

"'The house 'ud fetch three hundred and fifty,' said Jack, looking at me
with round solemn eyes, 'and the furniture 'ud fetch two hundred more.
And there's--how much is there in the bank, Madeline? Say sixty odd. Six
hundred pounds. You can live cheap in a place like Saloniki.'

"I could see Mrs. Evans was going to pieces. She went dull red and then
dull white, dropped a stitch or so, moved he