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Pardoner lighted a cigarette.

“You’re a strange girl,” he said. “One minute you talk like an infant, and the next like a woman of forty. Which are you?”

“That,” said Sarah, “will be for my husband to discover.”

James Tantamount, Esquire, had died at San Francisco.

The direct cause of death was his consumption of iced melon. The physician, who travelled with him mainly to pull his stomach out of the disorders into which the bon vivant was constantly haling that valuable member, had besought him again and again to eschew the delicacy. On each occasion James Tantamount had asked him what he thought he was there for. “Any fool,” he insisted, “can prevent. I can prevent myself. But I’m not going to. I’m not going to earn your money. Your job’s to cure—when I’m sick. Stick to it.” It was indeed, I fancy, as much with the idea of giving his attendant work as with that of indulging his appetite that he had upon the tenth day of June devoured two more slices of melon than he was accustomed to consume. If I am right, his ghost must have been disappointed. The man himself did not have time. In a word, he had consumed the delicacy, and pausing only to make a long nose at his physician upon the other side of the table, had laid down his life and his spoon at the same moment.