children--a staff of trained attendants waited on them. I'm not
sure they didn't have a doctor to take their temperature--at any
rate the place was full of thermometers. And they didn't sprawl
on the ground like ordinary melons; they were trained against the
glass like nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which
sustained its weight and left it free on all sides to the sun and
air. . .

"It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one
of his own melons--the pale-fleshed English kind. His life,
apathetic and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable
warm ventilated atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries.
The cardinal rule of his existence was not to let himself be
'worried.' . . . I remember his advising me to try it myself, one
day when I spoke to him about Kate's bad health, and her need of
a change. 'I never let myself worry,' he said complacently.
'It's the worst thing for the liver--and you look to me as if you
had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You'll make
yourself happier and others too.' And all he had to do was to
write a cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!

"The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us
already. The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for
us and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than
mine or Kate's--and one could picture him taking extra care of it
for the joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight
of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him.

"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity.
I flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons.