On reflection I found that very few presents would have escaped the endowment scheme altogether, and that the cigarette-case was really a comparatively modest pensioner, and I felt a little comforted.
For four quarters I remitted five guineas to Jane's uncle.
My present seemed to change his nature. Whereas he had been a man rather to ignore the claims of clothes than to consider them, I now noticed that he looked more prosperous and was better dressed than I had ever seen him before. Once, when he appeared in a new lounge suit—the second new one within my knowledge in six months—I could not refrain from remarking on it.
"One has to dress up to a silver cigarette-case, old fellow," he said, and the subject was dismissed.
The year was on the point of expiring. One day I was talking with Jane's uncle and another man at the Club. The other man offered me a cigarette, and to my amazement passed Jane's uncle over with these words:—
"No good offering you one, I know, poor old chap. When is your doctor going to give you a reprieve?"
"I don't know," he said sadly, taking a pinch of snuff.
"What does this mean?" I said when we were alone. "What about the endowment at the rate of fifteen cigarettes a day?"
"A parallel case to Jane's," he answered. "There seems something fatal about these endowments. Three days after you had agreed to endow the cigarette-case my doctor forbade me, on pain of some awful 'itis,' to exceed three cigarettes a day. With the first instalment you had provided me with cigarettes for the year. So what should I do in these circumstances but follow the precedent set by your family? Only, instead of a dormouse and a stamp-album, I chose to purchase smartness. I spent the three remaining instalments on my wardrobe."