ked and choked and gurgled, and hardly ate a
mouthful.

A female servant came in and waited; though Mrs. McPhee had told me time
and again that she would thank no one to do her housework while she had
her health. But this was a servant with a cap, and I saw Mrs. McPhee
swell and swell under her garance-coloured gown. There is no small
free-board to Janet McPhee, nor is garance any subdued tint; and with
all this unexplained pride and glory in the air I felt like watching
fireworks without knowing the festival. When the maid had removed the
cloth she brought a pineapple that would have cost half a guinea at that
season (only McPhee has his own way of getting such things), and a Canton
china bowl of dried lichis, and a glass plate of preserved ginger, and
a small jar of sacred and Imperial chow-chow that perfumed the room.
McPhee gets it from a Dutchman in Java, and I think he doctors it with
liqueurs. But the crown of the feast was some Madeira of the kind
you can only come by if you know the wine and the man. A little
maize-wrapped fig of clotted Madeira cigars went with the wine, and the
rest was a pale blue smoky silence; Janet, in her splendour, smiling on
us two, and patting McPhee's hand.

"We'll drink," said McPhee, slowly, rubbing his chin, "to the eternal
damnation o' Holdock, Steiner & Chase."

Of course I answered "Amen," though I had made seven pound ten shillings
out of the firm. McPhee's enemies were mine, and I was drinking his
Madeira.

"Ye've heard nothing?" said Janet. "Not a word, not a whisper?"

"Not a word, nor a whisper. On my word, I have not."

"Tell him, Mac," said she; and that is another proof of Janet's goodness
and wifely love. A smaller woman would have babbled first, but Janet is
five feet nine in her stockings.

"We're rich," said McPhee. I shook hands all round.

"We're damned rich," he added. I shook hands all round a second time.

"I'll go to sea no more--unless--there's no sayin'--a private yacht,
maybe--wi' a small an' handy auxiliary."

"It's not enough for that," said Janet. "We're fair rich--well-to-do,
but no more. A new gown for church, and one for the theatre. We'll have
it made west."

"How much is it?" I asked.

"Twenty-five thousand pounds." I drew a long breath. "An' I've been
earnin' twenty-five an' twenty pound a month!"

The last words came away with a roar, as though the wide world was
conspiring to beat him down.

"All this time I'm waiting," I said.