Smiling as though carelessly, the author made known his good fortune. For a
quarter of an hour Mr. Spicer could talk of nothing else.

'This has completed my cure!' he kept repeating. 'The work was composed
under my roof, my own roof, sir! Did I not tell you to take heart?'

'And where are you going to live?' asked Goldthorpe presently. 'You can't
go back to the old house.'

'Alas! no, sir. All my life I have dreamt of the joy of owning a house. You
know how the dream was realised, Mr. Goldthorpe, and you see what has come
of it at last. Probably it is a chastisement for overweening desires, sir.
I should have remembered my position, and kept my wishes within bounds.
But, Mr. Goldthorpe, I shall continue to cultivate the garden, sir. I shall
put in spring lettuces, and radishes, and mustard and cress. The property
is mine till midsummer day. You shall eat a lettuce of my growing, Mr.
Goldthorpe; I am bent on that. And how I grieve that you were not with me
at the time of the artichokes--just at the moment when they were touched by
the first frost!'

'Ah! They were really good, Mr. Spicer?'

'Sir, they seemed good to _me_, very good. Just at the moment of the first
frost!'




A CAPITALIST