nd I breathed again.

But I had other pleasures than these. Previously I had regarded the City
with awe, but now I felt a glow of possession come over me whenever I
approached it. Often in those first two months I used to lean against
the Mansion House in a familiar sort of way; once I struck a match
against the Royal Exchange. And what an impression of financial acumen I
could make in a drawing-room by a careless reference to my "block of
Jaguars!" Even those who misunderstood me and thought I spoke of my
"flock of Jaguars" were startled. Indeed life was very good just then.

But lately things have not been going well. At the beginning of April
Jaguars settled down at 1-1/16. Though I stood for hours at the club
tape, my hair standing up on end and my eyeballs starting from their
sockets, Jaguars still came through steadily at 1-1/16. To give them a
chance of doing something, I left them alone for a whole week--with what
agony you can imagine. Then I looked again; a whole week and anything
might have happened. Pauper or millionaire? No, still 1-1/16.

Worse was to follow. Editors actually took to leaving out Jaguars
altogether. I suppose they were sick of putting 1-1/16 in every edition.
But how ridiculous it made my idea seem of watching them go up and down!
How blank life became again!

And now what I dreaded most of all has happened. I have received a
"Progress Report" from the mine. It gives the "total footage" for the
month, special reference being made to "cross-cutting, winzing and
sinking." The amount of "tons crushed" is announced. There is serious
talk of "ore" being "extracted"; indeed there has already been a most
alarming "yield in fine gold." In short, it can no longer be hushed up
that the property may at any moment be "placed on a dividend-paying
basis."

Probably I shall be getting a safe five per cent.!

"Dash it all," as I said to my solicitor this morning, "I might just as
well have bought a rotten mortgage."

XVIII. THE THINGS THAT MATTER

Ronald, surveying the world from his taxi--that pleasant corner of the
world, St. James's Park--gave a sigh of happiness. The blue sky, the
lawn of daffodils, the mist of green upon the trees, were but a promise
of the better things which the country held for him. Beautiful as he
thought the daffodils, he found for the moment an even greater beauty in
the Gladstone bags at his feet. His eyes wandered from one to the other,
and his heart sang to h