“He hasn’t bored me a bit,” I answered; “in fact we are agreed on a great many things.  However, after I’ve had a glass of that cider I must start back to town.”

“We’d love to have you spend the night,” she urged.  “We’ve a nice little guestroom over the library.”

The invitation was tempting, but I wanted to get away and think.  Also it was my duty to look in on the bridge party before it became too sleepy to recognize my presence.  I drank my cider, bade my hostess good night and walked to the station with Hastings.  As we crossed the square to the train he said: 

“It was mighty good of you to come out here to see us and we both appreciate it.  Hope you’ll forgive my bluntness this morning and for shooting off my mouth so much this evening.”

“My dear fellow,” I returned, “that was what I came out for.  You’ve given me something to think about.  I’m thinking already.  You’re quite right.  You’d be a fool to change places with anybody—­let alone a miserable millionaire.”

* * * * *

In the smoker of the accommodation, to which I retired, I sat oblivious of my surroundings until we entered the tunnel.  So far as I could see, Hastings had it on me at every turn—­at thirty-three hundred a year—­considerably less than half of what I paid out annually in servants’ wages.  And the exasperating part of it all was that, though I spent seventy-two thousand a year, I did not begin to be as happy as he was!  Not by a jugful.  Face to face with the simple comfort of the cottage I had just left, its sincerity and affection, its thrifty self-respect, its wide interests, I confessed that I had not been myself genuinely contented since I left my mother’s house for college, thirty odd years before.  I had become the willing victim of a materialistic society.

I had squandered my life in a vain effort to purchase happiness with money—­an utter impossibility, as I now only too plainly saw.  I was poisoned with it, as Hastings had said—­sick with it and sick of it.  I was one of Hastings’ chaingangs of prosperous prisoners—­millionaires shackled together and walking in lockstep; one of his school of goldfish bumping their noses against the glass of the bowl in which they were confined by virtue of their inability to live outside the medium to which they were accustomed.

I was through with it!  From that moment I resolved to become a free man; living my own life; finding happiness in things that were worth while.  I would chuck the whole nauseating business of valets and scented baths; of cocktails, clubs and cards; of an unwieldy and tiresome household of lazy servants; of the ennui of heavy dinners; and of a family the members of which were strangers to each other.  I could and would easily cut down my expenditures to not more than thirty thousand a year; and with the balance of my income I would look after some of those sick babies Hastings had mentioned.