d yesterday, you remember, that I thought her one of
the nicest girls I have met. The cake has finished me. I think her now
_the_ nicest." He says this with a cheerful conscience. Between girls
and widows a deep margin lies.

"But what are we to do with it?" says Brian, regarding the cake, which
is now lying upon the garden seat, with a puzzled expression.

"Say a repentant tenant--no, that sounds like tautology--say a
remorseful tenant brought it to you."

"That wouldn't do at all."

"Then say you found it in the garden."

"Nonsense, Kelly! they don't _grow_. Think of something more plausible."

"Give me time, then." As he speaks he absently breaks off a piece of the
cake and puts it in his mouth. Desmond, in quite as abstracted a manner,
does likewise. Silence ensues.

"I think the idea was so sweet," says Desmond, presently, his thoughts
being (as they should be) with Monica.

"As honey and the honeycomb!" says Mr. Kelly, breaking off another
piece, with a far-off, rapt expression.

"She said she couldn't be happy, thinking we were hungry. Her dear heart
is too big for her body."

"Her cake is certainly," says Mr. Kelly: here he takes a third enormous
pinch out of it, and Desmond follows his example.

"I didn't tell her we had had dinner," says Brian. "It would have taken
the gloss off it."

"Off this?" pointing to the smoking structure between them. "I don't
believe it."

"No, the deed."

Another silence.

"It's a capital cake," says Mr. Kelly, pensively, who has been eating
steadily since the first bite. "After all, give me a good sweet,
home-made cake like this! Those bought ones aren't to be named in the
same day with it. There is something so light and wholesome about a cake
like this."

"Wholesome!" doubtfully: "I don't know about that. What _I_ like about
it is that it is hot and spongy. But, look here, you haven't yet said
what we are to do with it."

"I think we are doing uncommonly well with it," says Kelly, breaking off
another piece.

"But what are we to do with the remains, provided we leave any, which at
present seems doubtful?"

"Keep, them, of course. You ought to, considering she gave it you whole
as a present."

"You are right: no one shall touch a crumb of it save you and me," says
Mr. Desmond, as though inspired. "Let us smuggle it up to my room and
keep it there till it is finished."

"I feel as if I was at school again with a plum-cake and a chum," says
Mr. Kelly.