melons and monsters: every shape, colour and variety. They were
petted and nursed like 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