“’Look at it, look at it—­did you ever see such a beauty?  Such firmness—­roundness—­such delicious smoothness to the touch?’ It was as if he had said ‘she’ instead of ‘it,’ and when he put out his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look the other way.

“Then he told me what had happened.  The Italian under-gardener, who had been specially recommended for the melon-houses—­though it was against my cousin’s principles to employ a Papist—­had been assigned to the care of the monster:  for it had revealed itself, early in its existence, as destined to become a monster, to surpass its plumpest, pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be photographed and celebrated in every gardening paper in the land.  The Italian had done well—­seemed to have a sense of responsibility.  And that very morning he had been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next day at the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its blonde virginity.  But in picking it, what had the damned scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it—­drop it crash on the sharp spout of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash in its firm pale rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised, ruined, fallen melon?

“The old man’s rage was fearful in its impotence—­he shook, spluttered and strangled with it.  He had just had the Italian up and had sacked him on the spot, without wages or character—­had threatened to have him arrested if he was ever caught prowling about Wrenfield.  ’By God, and I’ll do it—­I’ll write to Washington—­I’ll have the pauper scoundrel deported!  I’ll show him what money can do!’ As likely as not there was some murderous Black-hand business under it—­it would be found that the fellow was a member of a ‘gang.’  Those Italians would murder you for a quarter.  He meant to have the police look into it...  And then he grew frightened at his own excitement.  ‘But I must calm myself,’ he said.  He took his temperature, rang for his drops, and turned to the Churchman.  He had been reading an article on Nestorianism when the melon was brought in.  He asked me to go on with it, and I read to him for an hour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about the fallen melon.

“All the while one phrase of the old man’s buzzed in my brain like the fly about the melon. ‘I’ll show him what money can do!’ Good heaven!  If I could but show the old man!  If I could make him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism!  I tried to tell him something about my situation and Kate’s—­spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name—­I stammered out an entreaty for a loan.  ’I can guarantee to repay you, sir—­I’ve a half-written play as security...’

“I shall never forget his glassy stare.  His face had grown as smooth as an egg-shell again—­his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like sentinels over a slippery rampart.