hat would it cost?" I said.

"That's easily reckoned," said Jane's uncle. "Say I smoke on an average
fifteen cigarettes a day--that's 105 a week--that's---- Have you a piece
of paper?"

It worked out at just under 5,500 cigarettes a year. At 8_s._ a hundred,
twenty guineas would just cover the year's endowment. It seemed out of
all proportion to the cost of the case.

"It's a good deal more than Jane's camera got," I protested.

"I told you its claims were greater. Of course you can't expect to get
off as cheaply with a fixed habit of maturity as with the passing
caprice of a kid. On the other hand you might have done worse. Suppose
you had given me golf-clubs--there'd have been golf-balls, caddies, club
subscription, lunches, fares and postage on correspondence with _The
Times_. Compared with that, what is a paltry five guineas a quarter?"

On reflection I found that very few presents would have escaped the
endowment scheme altogether, and that the cigarette-case was really a
comparatively modest pensioner, and I felt a little comforted.

For four quarters I remitted five guineas to Jane's uncle.

My present seemed to change his nature. Whereas he had been a man rather
to ignore the claims of clothes than to consider them, I now noticed
that he looked more prosperous and was better dressed than I had ever
seen him before. Once, when he appeared in a new lounge suit--the second
new one within my knowledge in six months--I could not refrain from
remarking on it.

"One has to dress up to a silver cigarette-case, old fellow," he said,
and the subject was dismissed.

The year was on the point of expiring. One day I was talking with Jane's
uncle and another man at the Club. The other man offered me a cigarette,
and to my amazement passed Jane's uncle over with these words:--

"No good offering you one, I know, poor old chap. When is your doctor
going to give you a reprieve?"

"I don't know," he said sadly, taking a pinch of snuff.

"What does this mean?" I said when we were alone. "What about the
endowment at the rate of fifteen cigarettes a day?"

"A parallel case to Jane's," he answered. "There seems something fatal
about these endowments. Three days after you had agreed to endow the
cigarette-case my doctor forbade me, on pain of some awful 'itis,' to
exceed three cigarettes a day. With the first instalment you had
provided me with cigarettes for the year. So what should I do in these
circumstances but foll