easy to run, profitable. A boy came singing down the road. The villas clustered together more socially. There was a movement of spring life.... As Edwin turned the corner of the Station Road, the impulse crystallized. One good action. To-day he would perform one good, kind, unselfish, unadvertised action. No one should ever know of it. Just one to-day. Then perhaps one to-morrow. And so on; in time it might become a habit. That is how one progressed. He took his seat in the crowded third-class smoker and pretended to read his newspaper, but his mind was too actively engaged with the problems of his new resolution. How? When? Where? How does one do a definitely good action? What is the best way to go to work? One could, of course, just quietly slip some money into a poor-box if one could be found. But would this be very good and self-sacrificing? Who gets money put in a poor-box? Surely his own family were poor enough, as far as that went. But he couldn’t go back home and give his wife a sovereign. It would be advertising his charity, and he would look silly doing it. His business? He might turn up and say to his assistants: “Boys, you shall all have a day’s holiday. We’ll shut up, and here’s your pay for the day.” Advertising again; besides, what about the hundreds of poor workers in the neighborhood who relied for their mid-day sustenance on “Pothecary’s Pride-of-the-Ocean Popular Plaice to Eat?” It would be cruel, cruel and—bad for business in the future. The public would lose confidence in that splendid gold-lettered tablet in the window which said “Cod, brill, halibut, plaice, pilchards always on hand. Eat them or take them away.” The latter sentence did not imply that if you took them away you did _not_ eat them; it simply meant that you could either stand at the counter and eat them from a plate with the aid of a fork and your fingers (or at one of the wooden benches if you could find room—an unlikely contingency), alternatively you could wrap them up in a piece of newspaper and devour them without a fork at the corner of the street. No, it would not be a good action in any way to close the Popular Plaice to eat. Edwin came to the conclusion that to perform this act satisfactorily it were better to divorce the proceeding entirely from any connection with home or business. The two things didn’t harmonize. A good action must be a special and separate effort in an entirely different setting. He would take the day off himself and do it thoroughly.