ng at her embroidery. Peter Reid sat shading his eyes
from the light with his hand.

Jean knelt down on the rug and held out her hands to the blazing fire.

"It must be sad to be old and rich," she said softly, almost as if she
were speaking to herself. "It is so very certain that we can carry
nothing out of this world.... I read somewhere of a man who, on every
birthday, gave away some of his possessions so that at the end he might
not be cumbered and weighted with them." She looked up and caught the
gaze of Peter Reid fixed on her intently. "It's rather a nice idea,
don't you think, to give away all the superfluous money and lands,
pictures and jewels, everything we have, and stand stripped, as it were,
ready when we get the word to come, to leap into the beyond?"

Pamela spoke first. "There speaks sweet and twenty," she said.

"Yes," said Jean. "I know it's quite easy for me to speak in that lordly
way of disposing of possessions, for I haven't got any to dispose of."

"Then," said Pamela, "we are to take it that you are ready to spring
across any minute?"

"So far as goods and gear go; but I'm rich in other things. I'm pretty
heavily weighted by David, and Jock, and Mhor."

Then Peter Reid spoke, still with his hand over his eyes.

"Once you begin to make money it clings. How can you get rid of it?"

"I'm saving up for a bicycle," the Mhor broke in, becoming aware that
the conversation turned on money. "I've got half a crown and a
thru-penny-bit and fourpence-ha'penny in pennies: and I've got a duster
to clean it with when I've got it."

Jean stroked his head. "I don't think you'll ever be overburdened with
riches, Mhor, old man. But it must be tremendous fun to be rich. I love
books where suddenly a lawyer's letter comes saying that someone has
left them a fortune."

"What would you do with a fortune if you got it?" Peter Reid asked.

"Need you ask?" laughed Pamela. "Miss Jean would at once make it over to
David and Jock and Mhor."

"Oh, well," said Jean, "of course they would come _first_, but, oh, I
would do such a lot of things! I'd find out where money was most needed
and drop it on the people anonymously so that they wouldn't be bothered
about thanking anyone. I would creep about like a beneficent Puck and
take worried frowns away, and straighten out things for tired people,
and, above all, I'd make children smile. There's no fun or satisfaction
got from giving big sums to hospitals and things--t