West mused. "He has a wonderful genius for crushing all the interest out of any subject he touches, hasn't he? Yet manifestly the first duty of an editorial is to get itself read. How old do you think he is?"

"Oh—anywhere from twenty-five to—forty-seven."

"He'll be twenty-four this month. I see him sometimes at the office, you know, where he still treats me like an intrusive subscription agent. In some ways, he is undoubtedly the oldest man in the world. In another way he hasn't any age at all. Spiritually he is unborn—he simply doesn't exist at all. I diagnose his complaint as ingrowing egoism of a singularly virulent variety."

It was beyond Sharlee's power to controvert this diagnosis. Mr. Queed had in fact impressed her as the most frankly and grossly self-centred person she had ever seen in her life. But unlike West, her uppermost feeling in regard to him was a strong sense of pity. She knew things about his life that West did not know and probably never would. For though the little Doctor of Mrs. Paynter's had probably not intended to give her a confidence, and certainly had no right to do so, she had thus regarded what he said to her in the dining-room that night, and of his pathetic situation in regard to a father she never meant to say a word to anybody.

"I sized him up for a remarkable man," said she, "when I saw the wonderful way he sat upon his hat that afternoon. Don't you remember? He struck me then as the most natural, unconscious, and direct human being I ever saw—don't you think that?—and now think of his powers of concentration. All his waking time, except what he gives to the Post, goes to that awful book of his. He is ridiculous now because his theory of life is ridiculous. But suppose it popped into his head some day to switch all that directness and concentrated energy in some other direction. Don't you think he might be rather a formidable young person?"

West conceded that there might be something in that. And happening to glance across the flower-sweet table at the moment, he was adroitly detached and re-attached by the superbly "finished" Miss Avery.

The little dinner progressed. Nor was this the only spot in town where evening meals were going forward amid stimulating talk. Far away over the town, at the same hour, the paying guests of Mrs. Paynter's were gathered about her hospitable board, plying the twin arts of supping and talking. And as Sharlee's fellow-diners talked of Mr. Queed, it chanced that Mr. Queed's fellow-suppers were talking of Sharlee, or at any rate of her family's famous misfortune. Mr. Queed, it is true, did not appreciate this fact, for the name of the female agent who had taken his Twenty from him could not have been more unknown to him if she had been a dweller in Phrygia or far Cappadocia.

Major Brooke told, not by request, one of his well-known stories about how he had flouted and routed the Republicans in 1875. The plot of these stories was always the same, but the setting shifted about here and there, and this one had to do with a county election in which, the Major said, the Republicans and negroes had gone the limit trying to swindle the Democrats out of the esteemed offices.

"And I said, 'You'—the ladies will excuse me, I'm sure—'You lying rascal,' s' I, 'don't you dare to contradict me! You're all tarred with the same pitch,' s' I. 'Everything you touch turns corrupt and rotten. Look at Henry G. Surface,' s' I. 'The finest fellow God ever made, till the palsied hand of Republicanism fell upon him, and now cankering and rotting in jail—'"

"But Henry G. Surface wasn't rotting in jail in 1875," said William Klinker, and boldly winked at the little Doctor.

The Major, disconcerted for an instant by his anachronism, recovered superbly. "My vision, sir, was prophetic. The stain was upon him. The cloven foot had already been betrayed...."

"And who was Henry G. Surface?" inquired Mr. Queed.

"What! You haven't heard that infamous story!" cried the Major, with the surprised delight of the inveterate raconteur who has unexpectedly stumbled upon an audience.

A chair-leg scraped, and Professor Nicolovius was standing, bowing in his sardonic way to Mrs. Paynter.

"Since I have happened to hear it often, madam, through Major Brooke's tireless kindness, you will perhaps be so good as to excuse me."

And he stalked out of the room, head up, his auburn goatee stabbing the atmosphere before him, in rather a heavy silence.

"Pish!" snapped the Major, when the door had safely shut. And tapping his forehead significantly, he gave his head a few solemn wags and launched upon the worn biography of Henry G. Surface.

Tattered with much use as the story is, and was, the boarders listened with a perennial interest while Major Brooke expounded the familiar details. His wealth of picturesque language we may safely omit, and briefly remind the student of the byways of history how Henry G. Surface found himself, during the decade following Appomattox, with his little world at his feet. He was thirty at the time, handsome, gifted, high-spirited, a brilliant young man who already stood high in the councils of the State. But he was also restless in disposition, arrogant, over-weeningly vain, and ambitious past all belief—"a yellow streak in him, and we didn't know it!" bellowed the Major. Bitterly chagrined by his failure to secure, from a legislature of the early seventies, the United States Senatorship which he had confidently expected, young Surface, in a burst of anger and resentment, committed the unforgivable sin. He went over bag and baggage to the other side, to the "nigger party" whom all his family, friends, and relations, all his "class," everybody else with his instincts and traditions, were desperately struggling, by hook and by crook, to crush.

In our mild modern preferences as between presidents, or this governor and that, we catch no reminiscence of the fierce antagonisms of the elections of reconstruction days. The idolized young tribune of the people became a Judas Iscariot overnight, with no silver pieces as the price of his apostasy. If he expected immediate preferment from the other camp, he was again bitterly disappointed. Life meantime had become unbearable to him. He was ostracized more studiously than any leper; it is said that his own father cut him when they passed each other in the street. His young wife died, heartbroken, it was believed, by the flood of hatred and vilification that poured in upon her husband. One man alone stood by Surface in his downfall, his classmate and friend of his bosom from the cradle, John Randolph Weyland, a good man and a true. Weyland's affection never faltered. When Surface withdrew from the State with a heart full of savage rancor, Weyland went every year or two to visit him, first in Chicago and later in New York, where the exile was not slow in winning name and fortune as a daring speculator. And when Weyland died, leaving a widow and infant daughter, he gave a final proof of his trust by making Surface sole trustee of his estate, which was a large one for that time and place. Few have forgotten how the political traitor rewarded this misplaced confidence. The crash came within a few months. Surface was arrested in the company of a woman whom he referred to as his wife. The trust fund, saving a fraction, was gone, swallowed up to stay some ricketty deal. Surface was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to ten years at hard labor, and every Democrat in the State cried, "I told you so." What had become of him after his release from prison, nobody knew; some of the boarders said that he was living in the west, or in Australia; others, that he was not living anywhere, unless on the shores of perpetual torment. All agreed that the alleged second Mrs. Surface had long since died—all, that is, but Klinker, who said that she had only pretended to die in order to make a fade-away with the gate receipts. For many persons believed, it seemed, that Surface, by clever juggling of his books, had managed to "hold out" a large sum of money in the enforced settlement of his affairs. At any rate, very little of it ever came back to the family of the man who had put trust in him, and that was why the daughter, whose name was Charlotte Lee Weyland, now worked for her daily bread.

That Major Brooke's hearers found this story of evergreen interest was natural enough. For besides the brilliant blackness of the narrative, there was the close personal connection that all Paynterites had with some of its chief personages. Did not the sister-in-law of John Randolph Weyland sit and preside over them daily, pouring their coffee morning and night with her own hands? And did not the very girl whose fortune had been stolen, the bereft herself, come now and then to sit among them, occupying that identical chair which Mr. Bylash could touch by merely putting out his hand? Henry G. Surface's story? Why, Mrs. Paynter's wrote it!

These personal bearings were of course lost upon Mr. Queed, the name Weyland being utterly without significance to him. He left the table the moment he had absorbed all the supper he wanted. In the hall he ran upon Professor Nicolovius, the impressive-looking master of Greek at Milner's Collegiate School, who, already hatted and overcoated, was drawing on his gloves under the depressed fancy chandelier. The old professor glanced up at the sound of footsteps and favored Queed with a bland smile.

"I can't resist taking our doughty swashbuckler down a peg or two every now and then," said he. "Did you ever know such an interminable ass?"

"Really, I never thought about it," said the young man, raising his eye-brows in surprise and annoyance at being addressed.

"Then take my word for it. You'll not find his match in America. You show your wisdom, at any rate, in giving as little of your valuable time as possible to our charming supper-table."

"That hardly argues any Solomonic wisdom, I fancy."

"You're in the hands of the Philistines here, Mr. Queed," said Nicolovius, snapping his final button. "May I say that I have read some of your editorials in the Post with—ah—pleasure and profit? I should feel flattered if you would come to see me in my room some evening, where I can offer you, at any rate, a fire and a so-so cigar."

"Thank you. However, I do not smoke," said Doctor Queed, and, bowing coldly to the old professor, started rapidly up the stairs.

Aloft the young man went to his scriptorium, happy in the thought that five hours of incorruptible leisure and unswerving devotion to his heart's dearest lay before him. It had been a day when the Post did not require him; hour by hour since breakfast he had fared gloriously upon his book. But to-night his little room was cold; unendurably cold; not even the flamings of genius could overcome its frigor; and hardly half an hour had passed before he became aware that his sanctum was altogether uninhabitable. Bitterly he faced the knowledge that he must fare forth into the outer world of the dining-room that night; irritably he gathered up his books and papers.

Half-way down the first flight a thought struck Queed, and he retraced his steps. The last time that he had been compelled to the dining-room the landlady's daughter had been there—(it was all an accident, poor child! Hadn't she vowed to herself never to intrude on the little Doctor again?)—and, stupidly breaking the point of her pencil, had had the hardihood to ask him for the loan of his knife. Mr. Queed was determined that this sort of thing should not occur again. A method for enforcing his determination, at once firm and courteous, had occurred to him. One could never tell when trespassers would stray into the dining-room—his dining-room by right of his exalted claim. Rummaging in his bottom bureau drawer, he produced a placard, like a narrow little sign-board, and tucking it under his arm, went on downstairs.

The precaution was by no means superfluous. Disgustingly enough the landlady's daughter was once more in his dining-room before him, the paraphernalia of her algebra spread over half the Turkey-red cloth. Fifi looked up, plainly terrified at his entrance and his forbidding expression. It was her second dreadful blunder, poor luckless little wight! She had faithfully waited a whole half-hour, and Mr. Queed had shown no signs of coming down. Never had he waited so long as this when he meant to claim the dining-room. Mrs. Paynter's room, nominally heated by a flume from the Latrobe heater in the parlor, was noticeably coolish on a wintry night. Besides, there was no table in it, and everybody knows that algebra is hard enough under the most favorable conditions, let alone having to do it on your knee. It seemed absolutely safe; Fifi had yielded to the summons of the familiar comforts; and now—

"Oh—how do you do?" she was saying in a frightened voice.

Mr. Queed bowed, indignantly. Silently he marched to his chair, the one just opposite, and sat down in offended majesty. To Fifi it seemed that to get up at once and leave the room, which she would gladly have done, would be too crude a thing to do, too gross a rebuke to the little Doctor's Ego. She was wrong, of course, though her sensibilities were indubitably right. Therefore she feigned enormous engrossment in her algebra, and struggled to make herself as small and inoffensive as she could.

The landlady's daughter wore a Peter Thompson suit of blue serge, which revealed a few inches of very thin white neck. She was sixteen and reddish-haired, and it was her last year at the High School. The reference is to Fifi's completion of the regular curriculum, and not to any impending promotion to a still Higher School. She was a fond, uncomplaining little thing, who had never hurt anybody's feelings in her life, and her eyes, which were light blue, had just that look of ethereal sweetness you see in Burne-Jones's women and for just that same reason. Her syrup she took with commendable faithfulness; the doctor, in rare visits, spoke cheerily of the time when she was to be quite strong and well again; but there were moments when Sharlee Weyland, looking at her little cousin's face in repose, felt her heart stop still.

Fifi dallied with her algebra, hoping and praying that she would not have to cough. She had been very happy all that day. There was no particular reason for it; so it was the nicest kind of happiness, the kind that comes from inside, which even the presence of the little Doctor could not take away from her. Heaven knew that Fifi harbored no grudge against Mr. Queed, and she had not forgotten what Sharlee said about being gentle with him. But how to be gentle with so austere a young Socrates? Raising her head upon the pretext of turning a page, Fifi stole a hurried glance at him.

The first thing Mr. Queed had done on sitting down was to produce his placard, silently congratulating himself on having brought it. Selecting the book which he would be least likely to need, he shoved it well forward, nearly halfway across the table, and against the volume propped up his little pasteboard sign, the printed part staring straight toward Fifi. The sign was an old one which he had chanced to pick up years ago at the Astor Library. It read:

SILENCE

Arch-type and model of courteous warning!

When Fifi read the little Doctor's sign, her feelings were not in the least wounded, insufficiently subtle though some particular people might have thought its admonition to be. On the contrary, it was only by the promptest work in getting her handkerchief into her mouth that she avoided laughing out loud. The two of them alone in the room and his Silence sign gazing at her like a pasteboard Gorgon!

Fifi became more than ever interested in Mr. Queed. An intense and strictly feminine curiosity filled her soul to know something of the nature of that work which demanded so stern a noiselessness. Observing rigorously the printed Rule of the Dining-Room, she could not forbear to pilfer glance after glance at the promulgator of it. Mr. Queed was writing, not reading, to-night. He wrote very slowly on half-size yellow pads, worth seventy-five cents a dozen, using the books only for reference. Now he tore off a sheet only partly filled with his small handwriting, and at the head of a new sheet inscribed a Roman numeral, with a single word under that. Like her cousin Sharlee at an earlier date, Fifi experienced a desire to study out, upside down, what this heading was. Several peeks were needed, with artful attention to algebra between whiles, before she was at last convinced that she had it. Undoubtedly it was

XVIII

ALTRUISM

There was nothing enormous about Fifi's vocabulary, but she well knew what to do in a case like this. Behind her stood a battered little walnut bookcase, containing the Paynter library. After a safe interval of absorption in her sums, she pushed back her chair with the most respectful quietude and pulled out a tall volume. The pages of it she turned with blank studious face but considerable inner expectancy: Af—Ai—Al—Alf....

A giggle shattered the academic calm, and Fifi, in horror, realized that she was the author of it. She looked up quickly, and her worst fears were realized. Mr. Queed was staring at her, as one scarcely able to credit his own senses, icy rebuke piercing through and overflowing his great round spectacles.

"I beg your pardon!—Mr. Queed. It—it slipped out, really—"

But the young man thought that the time had come when this question of noise in his dining-room must be settled once and for all.

"Indeed? Be kind enough to explain the occasion of it."

"Why," said Fifi, too truthful to prevaricate and completely cowed, "it—it was only the meaning of a word here. It—was silly of me. I—I can't explain it—exactly—"

"Suppose you try. Since your merriment interrupts my work, I claim the privilege of sharing it."

"Well! I—I—happened to see that word at the head of the page you are writing—"

"Proceed."

"I—I looked it up in the dictionary. It says," she read out with a gulp and a cough, "it means 'self-sacrificing devotion to the interests of others.'"

The poor child thought her point must now be indelicately plain, but the lips of Doctor Queed merely emitted another close-clipped: "Proceed."

At a desperate loss as she was, Fifi was suddenly visited by an idea. "Oh! I see. You're—you're writing against altruism, aren't you?"

"What leads you to that conclusion, if I may ask?"

"Why—I—I suppose it's the—way you—you do. Of course I oughtn't to have said it—"

"Go on. What way that I do?"

Poor Fifi saw that she was floundering in ever more deeply. With the boldness of despair she blurted out: "Well—one thing—you sent me out of the room that night—when I coughed, you know. I—I don't understand about altruism like you do, but I—should think it was—my interests to stay here—"

There followed a brief silence, which made Fifi more miserable than any open rebuke, and then Mr. Queed said in a dry tone: "I am engaged upon a work of great importance to the public, I may say to posterity. Perhaps you can appreciate that such a work is entitled to the most favorable conditions in which to pursue it."

"Of course. Indeed I understand perfectly, Mr. Queed," said Fifi, immediately touched by what seemed like kindness from him. And she added innocently: "All men—writing men, I mean—feel that way about their work—I suppose. I remember Mr. Sutro who used to have the very same room you're in now. He was writing a five-act play, all in poetry, to show the horrors of war, and he used to say—"

The young man involuntarily shuddered. "I have nothing to do with other men. I am thinking," he said with rather an unfortunate choice of words, "only of myself."

"Oh—I see! Now I understand exactly!"

"What is it that you see and understand so exactly?"

"Why, the way you feel about altruism. You believe in it for other people, but not for yourself! Isn't that right?"

They stared across the table at each other: innocent Fifi, who barely knew the meaning of altruism, but had practiced it from the time she could practice anything, and the little Doctor, who knew everything about altruism that social science would ever formulate, and had stopped right there. All at once, his look altered; from objective it became subjective. The question seemed suddenly to hook onto something inside, like a still street-car gripping hold of a cable and beginning to move; the mind's eye of the young man appeared to be seized and swept inward. Presently without a word he resumed his writing.

Fifi was much disturbed at the effect of her artless question, and just when everything was beginning to go so nicely too. In about half an hour, when she got up to retire, she said timidly:—

"I'm sorry if I—I was rude just now, Mr. Queed. Indeed, I didn't mean to be...."

"I did not say that you were rude," he answered without looking up.

But at the door Fifi was arrested by his voice.

"Why do you think it to your advantage to work in here?"

"It's—it's a good deal warmer, you know," said Fifi, flustered, "and—then of course there's the table and lamp. But it's quite all right upstairs—really!"

He made no answer.



VI

Autobiographical Data imparted, for Sound Business Reasons, to a Landlady's Agent; of the Agent's Other Title, etc.

While all move in slots in this world, Mr. Queed's slot was infinitely more clearly marked than any of his neighbors'. It ran exclusively between the heaven of his room and the hades of the Post office; manifesting itself at the latter place in certain staid writings done in exchange for ten dollars, currency of the realm, paid down each and every Saturday. Into this slot he had been lifted, as it were by the ears, by a slip of a girl of the name of Charlotte Lee Weyland, though it was some time before he ever thought of it in that way.

In the freemasonry of the boarding-house, the young man was early accepted as he was. He was promptly voted the driest, most uninteresting and self-absorbed savant ever seen. Even Miss Miller, ordinarily indefatigable where gentlemen were concerned, soon gave him up. To Mr. Bylash she spoke contemptuously of him, but secretly she was awed by his stately manner of speech and his godlike indifference to all pleasures, including those of female society. Of them all, Nicolovius was the only one who seemed in the least impressed by Mr. Queed's appointment as editorial writer on the Post. With the others the exalted world he moved in was so remote from theirs that no surprises were possible there, and if informed that the little Doctor had been elected president of Harvard University, it would have seemed all in the day's work to William Klinker. Klinker was six feet high, red-faced and friendly, and Queed preferred his conversation above any heard at Mrs. Paynter's table. It reminded him very much of his friend the yeggman in New York.

What went on behind the door of the tiny Scriptorium the boarders could only guess. It may be said that its owner's big grievance against the world was that he had to leave it occasionally to earn his bread and meat. Apart from this he never left it in those days except for one reason, viz., the consumption three times a day of the said bread and meat. Probably this was one explanation of the marked pallor of his cheek, but of such details as this he never took the smallest notice.

Under the tiny bed were three boxes of books, chief fruit of the savings of an inexpensive lifetime. But the books were now merely the occasional stimulus of a mind already well stored with their strength, well fortified against their weaknesses. Nowadays nearly all of Queed's time, which he administered by an iron-clad Schedule of Hours, duly drawn up, went to the actual writing of his Magnum Opus. He had practically decided that it should be called "The Science of Sciences." For his book was designed to cooerdinate and unify the theories of all science into the single theory which alone gave any of them a living value, namely, the progressive evolution of a higher organized society and a higher individual type. That this work would blaze a wholly new trail for a world of men, he rarely entertained a doubt. To its composition he gave fifteen actual hours a day on Post days, sixteen hours on non-Post days. Many men speak of working hours like these, or even longer ones, but investigation would generally show that all kinds of restful interludes are indiscriminately counted in. Queed's hours, you understand, were not elapsed time—they were absolutely net. He was one of the few men in the world who literally "didn't have time."

He sat in Colonel Cowles's office, scribbling rapidly, with his eye on his watch, writing one of those unanswerable articles which were so much dead space to a people's newspaper. It was a late afternoon in early February, soon after the opening of the legislature; and he was alone in the office. A knock fell upon the door, and at his "Come," a girl entered who looked as pretty as a dewy May morning. Queed looked up at her with no welcome in his eye, or greeting on his lip, or spring in the pregnant hinges of his knee. Yet if he had been a less self-absorbed young scientist, it must certainly have dawned on him that he had seen this lady before.

"Oh! How do you do!" said Sharlee, for it was indeed no other.

"Oh—quite well."

"Miss Leech tells me that Colonel Cowles has gone out. I particularly wished to see him. Perhaps you know when he will be back?"

"Perhaps in half an hour. Perhaps in an hour. I cannot say."

She mused disappointedly. "I could hardly wait. Would you be good enough to give him a message for me?"

"Very well."

"Well—just tell him, please, that if he can make it convenient, we'd like the article about the reformatory to go in to-morrow, or the next day, anyway. He'll understand perfectly; I have talked it all over with him. The only point was as to when the article would have the most effect, and we think the time has come now."

"You would like an article written about a reformatory for to-morrow's Post or next day's. Very well."

"Thank you so much for telling him. Good-afternoon."

"You would like," the young man repeated—"but one moment, if you please. You have omitted to inform me who you are."

To his surprise the lady turned round with a gay laugh. Sharlee had supposed that Mr. Queed, having been offended by her, was deliberately cutting her. That her identity had literally dropped cleanly from his mind struck her as both much better and decidedly more amusing.

"Don't you remember me?" she reminded him once again, laughing full at him from the threshhold. "My dog knocked you over in the street one day—surely you remember the pleasure-dog?—and then that night I gave you your supper at Mrs. Paynter's and afterwards collected twenty dollars from you for back board. I am Mrs. Paynter's niece and my name is Charlotte Weyland."

Weyland?... Weyland? Oho! So this was the girl—sure enough—that Henry G. Surface had stripped of her fortune. Well, well!

"Ah, yes, I recall you now."

She thought there was an inimical note in his voice, and to pay him for it, she said with a final smiling nod: "Oh, I am so pleased!"

Her little sarcasm passed miles over his head. She had touched the spring of the automatic card-index system known as his memory and the ingenious machinery worked on. Presently it pushed out and laid before him the complete record, neatly ticketed and arranged, the full dossier, of all that had passed between him and the girl. But she was nearly through the door before he had decided to say:

"I had another letter from my father last night."

"Oh!" she said, turning at once—"Did you!"

He nodded, gloomily. "However, there was not a cent of money in it."

If he had racked his brains for a subject calculated to detain her—which we may rely upon it that he did not do—he could not have hit upon a surer one. Sharlee Weyland had a great fund of pity for this young man's worse than fatherlessness, and did not in the least mind showing it. She came straight back into the room and up to the table where he sat.

"Does it help you at all—about knowing where he is, I mean?"

"Not in the least. I wonder what he's up to anyway?"

He squinted up at her interrogatively through his circular glasses, as though she ought to be able to tell him if anybody could. Then a thought very much like that took definite shape in his mind. He himself had no time to give to mysterious problems and will-o'-the-wisp pursuits; his book and posterity claimed it all. This girl was familiar with the city; doubtless knew all the people; she seemed intelligent and capable, as girls went. He remembered that he had consulted her about securing remunerative work, with some results; possibly she would also have something sensible to say about his paternal problem. He might make an even shrewder stroke. As his landlady's agent, this girl would of course be interested in establishing his connection with a relative who had twenty-dollar bills to give away. Therefore if it ever should come to a search, why mightn't he turn the whole thing over to the agent—persuade her to hunt his father for him, and thus leave his own time free for the service of the race?

"Look here," said he, with a glance at his watch. "I'll take a few minutes. Kindly sit down there and I'll show you how the man is behaving."

Sharlee sat down as she was bidden, close by his side, piqued as to her curiosity, as well as flattered by his royal condescension. She wore her business suit, which was rough and blue, with a smart little pony coat. She also wore a white veil festooned around her hat, and white gloves that were quite unspotted from the world. The raw February winds had whipped roses into her cheeks; her pure ultramarine eyes made the blue of her suit look commonplace and dull. Dusk had fallen over the city, and Queed cleverly bethought him to snap on an electric light. It revealed a very shabby, ramshackle, and dingy office; but the long table in it was new, oaken, and handsome. In fact, it was one of the repairs introduced by the new management.

"Here," said he, "is his first letter—the one that brought me from New York."

He took it from its envelope and laid it open on the table. A sense of the pathos in this ready sharing of one's most intimate secrets with a stranger took hold of Sharlee as she leaned forward to see what it might say.

"Be careful! Your feather thing is sticking my eye."

Meekly the girl withdrew to a safer distance. From there she read with amazement the six typewritten lines which was all that the letter proved to be. They read thus:

Your father asks that, if you have any of the natural feelings of a son, you will at once leave New York and take up your residence in this city. This is the first request he has ever made of you, as it will be, if you refuse it, the last. But he earnestly begs that you will comply with it, anticipating that it will be to your decided advantage to do so.

"The envelope that that came in," said Queed, briskly laying it down. "Now here's the envelope that the twenty dollars came in—it is exactly like the other two, you observe.—The last exhibit is somewhat remarkable; it came yesterday. Read that."

Sharlee required no urging. She read:

Make friends; mingle with people, and learn to like them. This is the earnest injunction of

Your father.

"Note especially," said the young man, "the initial Q on each of the three envelopes. You will observe that the tail in every instance is defective in just the same way."

Sure enough, the tail of every Q was broken off short near the root, like the rudimentary tail anatomists find in Genus Homo. Mr. Queed looked at her with scholarly triumph.

"I suppose that removes all doubt," said she, "that all these came from the same person."

"Unquestionably.—Well? What do they suggest to you?"

A circle of light from the green-shaded desk-lamp beat down on the three singular exhibits. Sharlee studied them with bewilderment mixed with profound melancholy.

"Is it conceivable," said she, hesitatingly—"I only suggest this because the whole thing seems so extraordinary—that somebody is playing a very foolish joke on you?"

He stared. "Who on earth would wish to joke with me?"

Of course he had her there. "I wish," she said, "that you would tell me what you yourself think of them."

"I think that my father must be very hard up for something to do."

"Oh—I don't think I should speak of it in that way if I were you."

"Why not? If he cites filial duty to me, why shall I not cite paternal duty to him? Why should he confine his entire relations with me in twenty-four years to two preposterous detective-story letters?"

Sharlee said nothing. To tell the truth, she thought the behavior of Queed Senior puzzling in the last degree.

"You grasp the situation? He knows exactly where I am; evidently he has known it all along. He could come to see me to-night; he could have come as soon as I arrived here three months ago; he could have come five, ten, twenty years ago, when I was in New York. But instead he elects to write these curious letters, apparently seeking to make a mystery, and throwing the burden of finding him on me. Why should I become excited over the prospect? If he would promise to endow me now, to support or pension me off, if I found him, that would be one thing. But I submit to you that no man can be expected to interrupt a most important life-work in consideration of a single twenty-dollar bill. And that is the only proof of interest I ever had from him. No—" he broke off suddenly—"no, that's hardly true after all. I suppose it was he who sent the money to Tim."

"To Tim?"

"Tim Queed."

Presently she gently prodded him. "And do you want to tell me who Tim Queed is?"

He eyed her thoughtfully. If the ground of his talk appeared somewhat delicate, nothing could have been more matter-of-fact than the way he tramped it. Yet now he palpably paused to ask himself whether it was worth his while to go more into detail. Yes; clearly it was. If it ever became necessary to ask the boarding-house agent to find his father for him, she would have to know what the situation was, and now was the time to make it plain to her once and for all.

"He is the man I lived with till I was fourteen; one of my friends, a policeman. For a long time I supposed, of course, that Tim was my father, but when I was ten or twelve, he told me, first that I was an orphan who had been left with him to bring up, and later on, that I had a father somewhere who was not in a position to bring up children. That was all he would ever say about it. I became a student while still a little boy, having educated myself practically without instruction of any sort, and when I was fourteen I left Tim because he married at that time, and, with the quarreling and drinking that followed, the house became unbearable. Tim then told me for the first time that he had, from some source, funds equivalent to twenty-five dollars a month for my board, and that he would allow me fifteen of that, keeping ten dollars a month for his services as agent. You follow all this perfectly? So matters went along for ten years, Tim bringing me the fifteen dollars every month and coming frequently to see me in between, often bringing along his brother Murphy, who is a yeggman. Last fall came this letter, purporting to be from my father. Absurd as it appeared to me, I decided to come. Tim said that, in that case, he would be compelled to cut off the allowance entirely. Nevertheless, I came."

Sharlee had listened to this autobiographical sketch with close and sympathetic attention. "And now that you are here—and settled—haven't you decided to do something—?"

He leaned back in his swivel chair and stared at her. "Do something! Haven't I done all that he asked? Haven't I given up fifteen dollars a month for him? Decidedly, the next move is his."

"But if you meant to take no steps when you got here, why did you come?"

"To give him his chance, of course. One city is exactly like another to me. All that I ask of any of them is a table and silence. Apart from the forfeiture of my income, living here and living there are all one. Do! You talk of it glibly enough, but what is there to do? There are no Queeds in this city. I looked in the directory this morning. In all probability that is not his name anyway. Kindly bear in mind that I have not the smallest clue to proceed upon, even had I the time and willingness to proceed upon it."

"I am obliged to agree with you," she said, "in thinking that your—"

"Besides," continued Doctor Queed, "what reason have I for thinking that he expects or desires me to track him down? For all that he says here, that may be the last thing in the world he wishes."

Sharlee, turning toward him, her chin in her white-gloved hand, looked at him earnestly.

"Do you care to have me discuss it with you?"

"Oh, yes, I have invited an expression of opinion from you."

"Then I agree with you in thinking that your father is not treating you fairly. His attitude toward you is extraordinary, to say the least of it. But of course there must be some good reason for this. Has it occurred to you that he may be in some—situation where it is not possible for him to reveal himself to you?"

"Such as what?"

"Well, I don't know—"

"Why doesn't he say so plainly in his letters then?"

"I don't know."

The young man threw out his hands with a gesture which inquired what in the mischief she was talking about then.

"Here is another thought," said Sharlee, not at all disconcerted. "Have you considered that possibly he may be doing this way—as a test?"

"Test of what?"

"Of you. I mean that, wanting to—to have you with him now, he is taking this way of finding out whether or not you want him. Don't you see what I mean? He appeals here to the natural feelings of a son, and then again he tells you to make friends and learn to like people. Evidently he is expecting something of you—I don't know exactly what. But don't you think, perhaps, that if you began a search for him, he would take it as a sign—"

"I told you that there was no way in which a search, as you call it, could be begun. Nor, if there were, have I the smallest inclination to begin it. Nor, again, if I had, could I possibly take the time from My Book."

She was silent a moment. "There is, of course, one way in which you could find out at any moment."

"Indeed! What is that, pray?"

"Mr. Tim Queed."

He smiled faintly but derisively. "Hardly. Of course Tim knows all about it. He told me once that he was present at the wedding of my parents; another time that my mother died when I was born. But he would add, and will add, not a word to these confidences; not even to assure me definitely that my father is still alive. He says that he has sworn an oath of secrecy. I called on him before I left New York. No, no; I may discover my father or he may discover me, or not, but we can rest absolutely assured that I shall get no help from Tim."

"But you can't mean simply to sit still—"

"And leave matters to him. I do."

"But—but," she still protested, "he is evidently unhappy Mr. Queed—evidently counting on you for something—"

"Then let him come out like a man and say plainly what he wants. I cannot possibly drop my work to try to solve entirely superfluous enigmas. Keep all this in mind—take an interest in it, will you?" he added briskly. "Possibly I might need your help some day."

"Certainly I will. I appreciate your telling me about it, and I'd be so glad to help you in any way that I could."

"How do you like my editorials?" he demanded abruptly.

"I'm afraid I don't understand a line of them!"

He waved his hand indulgently, like a grandfather receiving the just tribute of his little ones. "They are for thinkers, experts," said he, and picked up his pencil.

The agent took the hint; pushed back her chair; her glove was unbuttoned and she slowly fastened it. In her heart was a great compassion for the little Doctor.

"Mr. Queed, I want you to know that if I ever could be of help to you about anything, I'd always think it a real pleasure. Please remember that, won't you? Did you know I lived down this way, in the daytime?"

"Lived?"

She made a gesture toward the window, and away to the south and east. "My office is only three blocks away, down there in the park—"

"Your office? You don't work!"

"Oh, don't I though!"

"Why, I thought you were a lady!"

They were so close together that she was compelled to laugh full in his face, disclosing two rows of splendid little teeth and the tip of a rosy little tongue. Probably she could have crushed him by another pointing gesture, turned this time toward her honored great-grandfather who stood in marble in the square; but what was the use?

"What are you laughing at?" he inquired mildly.

"At your definition of a lady. Where on earth did you get it? Out of those laws of human society you write every night at my aunt's?"

"No," said he, the careful scientist at once, "no, I admit, if you like, that I used the term in a loose, popular sense. I would not seriously contend that females of gentle birth and breeding—ladies in the essential sense—are never engaged in gainful occupations—"

"You shouldn't," she laughed, "not in this city at any rate. It might astonish you to know how many females of gentle birth and breeding are engaged in gainful occupations on this one block alone. It was not ever thus with them. Once they had wealth and engaged in nothing but delicious leisure. But in 1861 some men came down here, about six to one, and took all this wealth away from them, at the same time exterminating the males. Result: the females, ladies in the essential sense, must either become gainful or starve. They have not starved. Sociologically, it's interesting. Make Colonel Cowles tell you about it some time."

"He has told me about it. In fact he tells me constantly. And this work that you do," he said, not unkindly and not without interest, "what is it? Are you a teacher, perhaps, a ... no!—You speak of an office. You are a clerk, doubtless, a bookkeeper, a stenographer, an office girl?"

She nodded with exaggerated gravity. "You have guessed my secret. I am a clerk, bookkeeper, stenographer, and office girl. My official title, of course, is a little more frilly, but you describe—"

"Well? What is it?"

"They call it Assistant Secretary of the State Department of Charities."

He looked astonished; she had no idea his face could take on so much expression.

"You! You! Why, how on earth did you get such a position?"

"Pull," said Sharlee.

Their eyes met, and she laughed him down.

"Who is the real Secretary to whom you are assistant?"

"The nicest man in the world. Mr. Dayne—Rev. George Dayne."

"A parson! Does he know anything about his subject? Is he an expert?—a trained relief worker? Does he know Willoughby? And Smathers? And Conant?"

"Knows them by heart. Quotes pages of them at a time in his letters without ever glancing at the books."

"And you?"

"I may claim some familiarity with their theories."

He fussed with his pencil. "I recall defining sociology for you one night at my boarding-house...."

"I remember."

"Well," said he, determined to find something wrong, "those men whom I mentioned to you are not so good as they think, particularly Smathers. I may as well tell you that I shall show Smathers up completely in my book."

"We shall examine your arguments with care and attention. We leave no stone unturned to keep abreast of the best modern thought."

"It is extraordinary that such a position should be held by a girl like you, who can have no scientific knowledge of the many complex problems.... However," he said, a ray of brightness lightening his displeasure, "your State is notoriously backward in this field. Your department, I fancy, can hardly be more than rudimentary."

"It will be much, much more than that in another year or two. Why, we're only four years old!"

"So this is why you are interested in having editorials written about reformatories. It is a reformatory for women that you wish to establish?"

"How did you know?"

"I merely argue from the fact that your State is so often held up to reproach for lack of one. What is the plan?"

"We are asking," said the Assistant Secretary, "for a hundred thousand dollars—sixty thousand to buy the land and build, forty thousand for equipment and two years' support. Modest enough, is it not? Of course we shall not get a penny from the present legislature. Legislatures love to say no; it dearly flatters their little vanity. We are giving them the chance to say no now. Then when they meet again, two years from now, we trust that they will be ready to give us what we ask—part of it, at any rate. We can make a start with seventy-five thousand dollars."

Queed was moved to magnanimity. "Look here. You have been civil to me—I will write that article for you Myself."

While Sharlee had become aware that the little Doctor was interested, really interested, in talking social science with her, she thought he must be crazy to offer such a contribution of his time. A guilty pink stole into her cheek. A reformatory article by Mr. Queed would doubtless be scientifically pluperfect, but nobody would read it. Colonel Cowles, on the other hand, had never even heard of Willoughby and Smathers; but when he wrote an article people read it, and the humblest understood exactly what he was driving at.

"Why—it's very nice of you to offer to help us, but I couldn't think of imposing on your time—"

"Naturally not," said he, decisively; "but it happens that we have decided to allow a breathing-space in my series on taxation, that the public may digest what I have already written. I am therefore free to discuss other topics for a few days. For to-morrow's issue, I am analyzing certain little understood industrial problems in Bavaria. On the following day—"

"It's awfully good of you to think of it," said Sharlee, embarrassed by his grave gaze. "I can't tell you how I appreciate it. But—but—you see, there's a lot of special detail that applies to this particular case alone—oh, a great lot of it—little facts connected with peculiar State conditions and—and the history of our department, you know—and I have talked it over so thoroughly with the Colonel—"

"Here is Colonel Cowles now."

She breathed a sigh. Colonel Cowles, entering with the breath of winter upon him, greeted her affectionately. Queed, rather relieved that his too hasty offer had not been accepted, noted with vexation that his conversation with the agent had cost him eighteen minutes of time. Vigorously he readdressed himself to the currency problems of the Bavarians; the girl's good-night, as applied to him, fell upon ears deafer than any post.

Sharlee walked home through the tingling twilight; fourteen blocks, and she did them four times a day. It was a still evening, clear as a bell and very cold; already stars were pushing through the dim velvet round; all the world lay white with a light hard snow, crusted and sparkling under the street lights. Her private fear about the whole matter was that Queed Senior was a person of a criminal mode of life, who, discovering the need of a young helper, was somehow preparing to sound and size up his long-neglected son.



VII

In which an Assistant Editor, experiencing the Common Desire to thrash a Proof-Reader, makes a Humiliating Discovery; and of how Trainer Klinker gets a Pupil the Same Evening.

The industrial problems of the Bavarians seemed an inoffensive thesis enough, but who can evade Destiny?

Queed never read his own articles when they appeared in print in the Post. In this peculiarity he may be said to have resembled all the rest of the world, with the exception of the Secretary of the Tax Reform League, and the Assistant Secretary of the State Department of Charities. But not by any such device, either, can a man elude his Fate. On the day following his conversation with Mrs. Paynter's agent, Fortune gave Queed to hear a portion of his article on the Bavarians read aloud, and read with derisive laughter.

The incident occurred on a street-car, which he had taken because of the heavy snow-fall: another illustration of the tiny instruments with which Providence works out its momentous designs. Had he not taken the car—he was on the point of not taking it, when one whizzed invitingly up—he would never have heard of the insult that the Post's linotype had put upon him, and the course of his life might have been different. As it was, two men on the next seat in front were reading the Post and making merry.

"... 'A lengthy procession of fleas harassed the diet.' Now what in the name of Bob ..."

Gradually the sentence worked its way into the closed fastness of the young man's mind. It had a horrible familiarity, like a ghastly parody on something known and dear. With a quick movement he leaned forward, peering over the shoulder of the man who held the paper.

The man looked around, surprised and annoyed by the strange face breaking in so close to his own, but Queed paid no attention to him. Yes ... it was his article they were mocking at—HIS article. He remembered the passage perfectly. He had written: "A lengthy procession of pleas harassed the Diet." His trained eye swept rapidly down the half column of print. There it was! "A procession of fleas." In his article! Fleas, unclean, odious vermin, in His Article!

Relatively, Queed cared nothing about his work on the Post, but for all the children of his brain, even the smallest and feeblest, he had a peculiar tenderness. He was more jealous of them than a knight of his honor, or a beauty of her complexion. No insult to his character could have enraged him like a slight put upon the least of these his articles. He sat back in his seat, feeling white, and something clicked inside his head. He remembered having heard that click once before. It was the night he determined to evolve the final theory of social progress, which would wipe out all other theories as the steam locomotive had wiped out the prairie schooner.

He knew well enough what that click meant now. He had got a new purpose, and that was to exact personal reparation from the criminal who had made Him and His Work the butt of street-car loafers. Never, it seemed to him, could he feel clean again until he had wiped off those fleas with gore.

To his grim inquiry Colonel Cowles replied that the head proof-reader, Mr. Pat, was responsible for typographical errors, and Mr. Pat did not "come on" till 6.30. It was now but 5.50. Queed sat down, wrote his next day's article and handed it to the Colonel, who read the title and coughed.

"I shall require no article from you to-morrow or next day. On the following day"—here the Colonel opened a drawer and consulted a schedule—"I shall receive with pleasure your remarks on 'Fundamental Principles of Distribution—Article Four.'"

Queed ascended to the next floor, a noisy, discordant floor, full of metal tables on castors, and long stone-topped tables not on castors, and Mergenthaler machines, and slanting desk-like structures holding fonts of type. Rough board partitions rose here and there; over everything hung the deadly scent of acids from the engravers' room.

"That's him now," said an ink-smeared lad, and nodded toward a tall, gangling, mustachioed fellow in a black felt hat who had just come up the stairs.

Queed marched straight for the little cubbyhole where the proof-readers and copy-holders sweated through their long nights.

"You are Mr. Pat, head proof-reader of the Post?"

"That's me, sor," said Mr. Pat, and he turned with rather a sharp glance at the other's tone.

"What excuse have you to offer for making my article ridiculous and me a common butt?"

"An' who the divil may you be, please?"

"I am Mr. Queed, special editorial writer for this paper. Look at this." He handed over the folded Post, with the typographical enormity heavily underscored in blue. "What do you mean by falsifying my language and putting into my mouth an absurd observation about the most loathsome of vermin?"

Mr. Pat was at once chagrined and incensed. He happened, further, to be in most sensitive vein as regards little oversights in his department. His professional pride was tortured with the recollection that, only three days before, he had permitted the Post to refer to old Major Lamar as "that immortal veterinary," and upon the Post's seeking to retrieve itself the next day, at the Major's insistent demand, he had fallen into another error. The hateful words had come out as "immoral veteran."

"Now look here!" said he, "there's nothing to be gained talking that way. Ye've got me—I'll give ye that! But what do ye expect?—eighty columns of type a night and niver a little harmless slip—?"

"You must be taught to make no slips with my articles. I'm going to punish you for that—"

"What-a-at! Say that agin!"

"Stand out here—I am going to give you a good thrashing. I shall whip ..."

Another man would have laughed heartily and told the young man to trot away while the trotting was good. He was nearly half a foot shorter than Mr. Pat, and his face advertised his unmartial customs. But Mr. Pat had the swift fierce passions of his race; and it became to him an unendurable thing to be thus bearded by a little spectacled person in his own den. He saw red; and out shot his good right arm.

The little Doctor proved a good sailer, but bad at making a landing. His course was arched, smooth, and graceful, but when he stopped, he did it so bluntly that men working two stories below looked up to ask each other who was dead. Typesetters left their machines and hurried up, fearing that here was a case for ambulance or undertaker. But they saw the fallen editor pick himself up, with a face of stupefied wonder, and immediately start back toward the angry proof-reader.

Mr. Pat lowered redly on his threshhold. "G'awn now! Get away!"

Queed came to a halt a pace away and stood looking at him.

"G'awn, I tell ye! I don't want no more of your foolin'!"

The young man, arms hanging inoffensively by his side, stared at him with a curious fixity.

These tactics proved strangely disconcerting to Mr. Pat, obsessed as he was by a sudden sense of shame at having thumped so impotent an adversary.

"Leave me be, Mr. Queed. I'm sorry I hit ye, and I niver would 'a' done it—if ye hadn't—"

The man's voice died away. He became lost in a great wonder as to what under heaven this little Four-eyes meant by standing there and staring at him with that white and entirely unfrightened face.

Queed was, in fact, in the grip of a brand-new idea, an idea so sudden and staggering that it overwhelmed him. He could not thrash Mr. Pat. He could not thrash anybody. Anybody in the world that desired could put gross insult upon his articles and go scot-free, the reason being that the father of these articles was a physical incompetent.

All his life young Mr. Queed had attended to his own business, kept quiet and avoided trouble. This was his first fight, because it was the first time that anybody had publicly insulted his work. In his whirling sunburst of indignation, he had somehow taken it for granted that he could punch the head of a proof-reader in much the same way that he punched the head off Smathers's arguments. Now he suddenly discovered his mistake, and the discovery was going hard with him. Inside him there was raging a demon of surprising violence of deportment; it urged him to lay hold of some instrument of a rugged, murderous nature and assassinate Mr. Pat. But higher up in him, in his head, there spoke the stronger voice of his reason. While the demon screamed homicidally, reason coldly reminded the young man that not to save his life could he assassinate, or even hurt, Mr. Pat, and that the net result of another endeavor to do so would be merely a second mortifying atmospheric journey. Was it not unreasonable for a man, in a hopeless attempt to gratify irrational passion, to take a step the sole and certain consequences of which would be a humiliating soaring and curveting through the air?

It was a terrible struggle, the marks of which broke out on the young man's forehead in cold beads. But he was a rationalist among rationalists, and in the end his reason subdued his demon. Therefore, the little knot of linotypers and helpers who had stood wonderingly by while the two adversaries stared at each other, through a tense half-minute, now listened to the following dialogue:—

"I believe I said that I would give you a good thrashing. I now withdraw those words, for I find that I am unable to make them good."

"I guess you ain't—what the divil did ye expect? Me to sit back with me hands behind me and leave ye—"

"I earnestly desire to thrash you, but it is plain to me that I am not, at present, in position to do so."

"Fergit it! What's afther ye, Mr. Queed—?"

"To get in position to thrash you, would take me a year, two years, five years. It is not—no, it is not worth my time."

"Well, who asked f'r any av your time? But as f'r that, I'll give ye your chance to get square—"

"I suppose you feel yourself free now to take all sorts of detestable liberties with my articles?"

"Liberties—what's bitin' ye, man? Don't I read revised proof on the leaded stuff every night, no matter what the rush is? When did ye ever before catch me—?"

"Physically, you are my superior, but muscle counts for very little in this world, my man. Morally, which is all that matters, I am your superior—you know that, don't you? Be so good as to keep your disgusting vermin out of my articles in the future."

He walked away with a face which gave no sign of his inner turmoil. Mr. Pat looked after him, stirred and bewildered, and addressed his friends the linotypers angrily.

"Something loose in his belfry, as ye might have surmised from thim damfool tax-drools."

For Mr. Pat was still another reader of the unanswerable articles, he being paid the sum of twenty-seven dollars per week to peruse everything that went into the Post, including advertisements of auction sales and for sealed bids.

Queed returned to his own office for his hat and coat. Having heard his feet upon the stairs, Colonel Cowles called Out:—

"What was the rumpus upstairs, do you know? It sounded as if somebody had a bad fall."

"Somebody did get a fall, though not a bad one, I believe."

"Who?" queried the editor briefly.

"I."

In the hall, it occurred to Queed that perhaps he had misled his chief a little, though speaking the literal truth. The fall that some body had gotten was indeed nothing much, for people's bodies counted for nothing so long as they kept them under. But the fall that this body's self-esteem had gotten was no such trivial affair. It struck the young man as decidedly curious that the worst tumble his pride had ever received had come to him through his body, that part of him which he had always treated with the most systematic contempt.

The elevator received him, and in it, as luck would have it, stood a tall young man whom he knew quite well.

"Hello, there, Doc!"

"How do you do, Mr. Klinker?"

"Been up chinning your sporting editor, Ragsy Hurd. Trying to arrange a mill at the Mercury between Smithy of the Y.M.C.A. and Hank McGurk, the White Plains Cyclone."

"A mill—?"

"Scrap—boxin' match, y' know. Done up your writings for the day?"

"My newspaper writings—yes."

In the brilliant close quarters of the lift, Klinker was looking at Mr. Queed narrowly. "Where you hittin' for now? Paynter's?"

"Yes."

"Walkin'?—That's right. I'll go with you."

As they came out into the street, Klinker said kindly: "You ain't feelin' good, are you, Doc? You're lookin' white as a milk-shake."

"I feel reasonably well, thank you. As for color, I have never had any, I believe."

"I don't guess, the life you lead. Got the headache, haven't you? Have it about half the time, now don't you, hey?"

"Oh, I have a headache quite frequently, but I never pay any attention to it."

"Well, you'd ought to. Don't you know the headache is just nature tipping you off there's something wrong inside? I've been watching you at the supper table for some time now. That pallor you got ain't natural pallor. You're pasty, that's right. I'll bet segars you wake up three mornings out of four feelin' like a dish of stewed prunes."

"If I do—though of course I can only infer how such a dish feels—it is really of no consequence, I assure you."

"Don't you fool yourself! It makes a lot of consequence to you. Ask a doctor, if you don't believe me. But I got your dia'nosis now, same as a medical man that's right. I know what's your trouble, Doc, just like you had told me yourself."

"Ah? What, Mr. Klinker?"

"Exercise."

"You mean lack of exercise?"

"I mean," said Klinker, "that you're fadin' out fast for the need of it."

The two men pushed on up Centre Street, where the march of home-goers was now beginning to thin out, in a moment of silence. Queed glanced up at Klinker's six feet of red beef with a flash of envy which would have been unimaginable to him so short a while ago as ten minutes. Klinker was physically competent. Nobody could insult his work and laugh at the merited retribution.

"Come by my place a minute," said Klinker. "I got something to show you there. You know the shop, o' course?"

No; Mr. Queed was obliged to admit that he did not.

"I'm manager for Stark's," said Klinker, trying not to appear boastful. "Cigars, mineral waters, and periodicals. And a great rondy-vooze for the sporting men, politicians, and rounders of the town, if I do say it. I've seen you hit by the window many's the time, only your head was so full of studies you never noticed."

"Thank you, I have no time this evening, I fear—"

"Time? It won't take any—it's right the end of this block. You can't do any studyin' before supper-time, anyhow, because it's near that now. I got something for you there."

They turned into Stark's, a brilliantly-lit and prettily appointed little shop with a big soda-water plant at the front. To a white-coated boy who lounged upon the fount, Klinker spoke winged words, and the next moment Queed found himself drinking a foaming, tingling, hair-trigger concoction under orders to put it all down at a gulp.

They were seated upon a bench of oak and leather upholstery, with an enormous mirror reproducing their back views to all who cared to see. Klinker was chewing a tooth-pick; and either a tooth-pick lasted him a long time, or the number he made away with in a year was simply stupendous.

"Ever see a gymnasier, Doc?"

No; it seemed that the Doc had not.

"We got one here. There's a big spare room behind the shop. Kind of a store-room it was, and the Mercuries have fitted it up as a gymnasier and athletic club. Only they're dead ones and don't use it much no more. Got kind of a fall this afternoon, didn't you, Doc?"

"What makes you think that?"

"That eye you got. She'll be a beaut to-morrow—skin's broke too. A bit of nice raw beefsteak clapped on it right now would do the world and all for it."

"Oh, it is of no consequence—"

"You think nothing about your body is consequence, Doc, that only your mind counts, and that's just where you make your mistake. Your body's got to carry your mind around, and if it lays down on you, what—"

"But I have no intention of letting my body lie down on me, as you put it, Mr. Klinker. My health is sound, my constitution—"

"Forget it, Doc. Can't I look at you and see with my own eyes? You're committing slow suicide by over-work. That's what it is."

"As it happens, I am doing nothing of the sort. I have been working exactly this way for twelve years."

"Then all the bigger is the overdue bill nature's got against you, and when she does hit you she'll hit to kill. Where'll your mind and your studies be when we've planted your body down under the sod?"

Mr. Queed made no reply. After a moment, preparing to rise, he said: "I am obliged to you for that drink. It is rather remarkable—"

"Headache all gone, hey?"

"Almost entirely. I wish you would give me the name of the medicine. I will make a memorandum—"

"Nix," said Klinker.

"Nix? Nux I have heard of, but ..."

"Hold on," laughed Klinker, as he saw Queed preparing to enter Nix in his note-book. "That ain't the name of it, and I ain't going to give it to you. Why, that slop only covers up the trouble, Doc—does more harm than good in the long run. You got to go deeper and take away the cause. Come back here and I'll show you your real medicine."

"I'm afraid—"

"Aw, don't flash that open-faced clock of yours on me. That's your trouble, Doc—matching seconds against your studies. It won't take a minute, and you can catch it up eating supper faster if you feel you got to."

Queed, curious, as well as decidedly impressed by Klinker's sure knowledge in a field where he was totally ignorant, was persuaded. The two groped their way down a long dark passage at the rear of the shop, and into a large room like a cavern. Klinker lit a flaring gas-jet and made a gesture.

"The Mercury Athletic Club gymnasier and sporting-room."

It was a basement room, with two iron-grated windows at the back. Two walls were lined with stout shelves, partially filled with boxes. The remaining space, including wall-space, was occupied by the most curious and puzzling contrivances that Queed had ever seen. Out of the glut of enigmas there was but one thing—a large mattress upon the floor—that he could recognize without a diagram.

"Your caretaker sleeps here, I perceive."

Klinker laughed. "Look around you, Doc. Take a good gaze."

Doc obeyed. Klinker picked up a "sneaker" from the floor and hurled it with deadly precision at a weight-and-pulley across the room.

"There's your medicine, Doc!"

Orange-stick in mouth, he went around like a museum guide, introducing the beloved apparatus to the visitor under its true names and uses, the chest-weights, dumb-*bells and Indian clubs, flying-rings, a rowing-machine, the horizontal and parallel bars, the punching-bag and trapeze. Klinker lingered over the ceremonial; it was plain that the gymnasier was very dear to him. In fact, he loved everything pertaining to bodily exercise and manly sport; he caressed a boxing-glove as he never caressed a lady's hand; the smell of witch-hazel on a hard bare limb was more titillating to him than any intoxicant. The introduction over, Klinker sat down tenderly on the polished seat of the rowing-machine, and addressed Doctor Queed, who stood with an academic arm thrown gingerly over the horizontal bar.

"There's your medicine, Doe. And if you don't take it—well, it may be the long good-by for yours before the flowers bloom again."

"How do you mean, Mr. Klinker—there is my medicine?"

"I mean, you need half an hour to an hour's hardest kind of work right here every day, reg'lar as meals."

Queed started as though he had been stung. He cleared his throat nervously.

"No doubt that would be beneficial—in a sense, but I cannot afford to take the time from My Book—"

"That's where you got it dead wrong. You can't afford not to take the time. Any doctor'll tell you the same as me, that you'll never finish your book at all at the clip you're hitting now. You'll go with nervous prostration, and it'll wipe you out like a fly. Why, Doc," said Klinker, impressively, "you don't realize the kind of life you're leading—all indoors and sedentary and working twenty hours a day. I come in pretty late some nights, but I never come so late that there ain't a light under your door. A man can't stand it, I tell you, playing both ends against the middle that away. You got to pull up, or it's out the door feet first for you."

Queed said uneasily: "One important fact escapes you, Mr. Klinker. I shall never let matters progress so far. When I feel my health giving way—"

"Needn't finish—heard it all before. They think they're going to stop in time, but they never do. Old prostration catches 'em first every crack. You think an hour a day exercise would be kind of a waste, ain't that right? Kind of a dead loss off'n your book and studies?"

"I certainly do feel—"

"Well, you're wrong. Listen here. Don't you feel some days as if mebbe you could do better writing and harder writing if only you didn't feel so mean?"

"Well ... I will frankly confess that sometimes—"

"Didn't I know it! Do you know what, Doc? If you knocked out a little time for reg'lar exercise, you'd find when bedtime came, that you'd done better work than you ever did before."

Queed was silent. He had the most logical mind in the world, and now at last Klinker had produced an argument that appealed to his reason.

"I'll put it to you as a promise," said Klinker, eyeing him earnestly. "One hour a day exercise, and you do more work in twenty-four hours than you're doing now, besides feelin' one hundred per cent better all the time."

Still Queed was silent. One hour a day!

"Try it for only a month," said Klinker the Tempter.

"I'll help you—glad to do it—I need the drill myself. Gimme an hour a day for just a month, and I'll bet you the drinks you wouldn't quit after that for a hundred dollars."

Queed turned away from Klinker's honest eyes, and wrestled the bitter thing out. Thirty Hours stolen from His Book!... Yesterday, even an hour ago, he would not have considered such an outrage for a moment. But now, driving him irresistibly toward the terrible idea, working upon him far more powerfully than his knowledge of headache, even than Klinker's promise of a net gain in his working ability, was this new irrationally disturbing knowledge that he was a physical incompetent.... If he had begun systematic exercise ten years ago, probably he could thrash Mr. Pat to-day.

Yet an hour a day is not pried out of a sacred schedule of work without pains and anguish, and it was with a grim face that the Doc turned back to William Klinker.

"Very well, Mr. Klinker, I will agree to make the experiment, tentatively—an hour a day for thirty days only."

"Right for you, Doc! You'll never be sorry—take it from me."

Klinker was a brisk, efficient young man. The old gang that had fitted out the gymnasium had drifted away, and the thought of going once more into regular training, with a pupil all his own, was breath to his nostrils. He assumed charge of the ceded hour with skilled sureness. Rain or shine, the Doctor was to take half an hour's hard walking in the air every day, over and above the walk to the office. Every afternoon at six—at which hour the managerial duties at Stark's terminated—he was to report in the gym for half an hour's vigorous work on the apparatus. This iron-clad regime was to go into effect on the morrow.

"I'll look at you stripped," said Klinker, eyeing his new pupil thoughtfully, "and see first what you need. Then I'll lay out a reg'lar course for you—exercises for all parts of the body. Got any trunks?"

Queed looked surprised. "I have one small one—a steamer trunk, as it is called."

Klinker explained what he meant, and the Doctor feared that his wardrobe contained no such article.

"Ne'mmind. I can fit you up with a pair. Left Hand Tom's they used to be, him that died of the scarlet fever Thanksgiving. And say, Doc!"

"Well?"

"Here's the first thing I'll teach you. Never mister your sparring-partner."

The Doc thought this out, laboriously, and presently said: "Very well, William."

"Call me Buck, the same as all the boys."

Klinker came toward him holding out an object made of red velveteen about the size of a pocket handkerchief.

"Put these where you can find them to-morrow. You can have 'em. Left Hand Tom's gone where he don't need 'em any more."

"What are they? What does one do with them?"

"They're your trunks. You wear 'em."

"Where? On—what portion, I mean?"

"They're like little pants," said Klinker.

The two men walked home together over the frozen streets. Queed was taciturn and depressed. He was annoyed by Klinker's presence and irritated by his conversation; he wanted nothing in the world so much as to be let alone. But honest Buck Klinker remained unresponsive to his mood. All the way to Mrs. Paynter's he told his new pupil grisly stories of men he had known who had thought that they could work all day and all night, and never take any exercise. Buck kindly offered to show the Doc their graves.



VIII

Formal Invitation to Fifi to share Queed's Dining-Room (provided it is very cold upstairs); and First Outrage upon the Sacred Schedule of Hours.

Queed supped in an impenetrable silence. The swelling rednesses both above and below his left eye attracted the curious attention of the boarders, but he ignored their glances, and even Klinker forbore to address him. The meal done, he ascended to his sacred chamber, but not alas, to remain.

For a full week, the Scriptorium had been uninhabitable by night, the hands of authors growing too numb there to write. On this night, conditions were worse than ever; the usual valiant essay was defeated with more than the usual case. Queed fared back to his dining-room, as was now becoming his melancholy habit. And to-night the necessity was exceptionally trying, for he found that the intrusive daughter of the landlady had yet once again spread her mathematics there before him.

Nor could Fifi this time claim misunderstanding and accident. She fully expected the coming of Mr. Queed, and had been nervously awaiting it. The state of mind thus induced was not in the least favorable to doing algebra successfully or pleasurably. No amount of bodily comfort could compensate Fifi for having to have it. But her mother had ruled the situation to-night with a strong hand and a flat foot. The bedroom was entirely too cold for Fifi. She must, positively must, go down to the warm and comfortable dining-room,—do you hear me, Fifi? As for Mr. Queed—well, if he made himself objectionable, Sharlee would simply have to give him another good talking to.

Yet Fifi involuntarily cowered as she looked up and murmured: "Oh—good evening!"

Mr. Queed bowed. In the way of conveying displeasure, he had in all probability the most expressive face in America.

He passed around to his regular place, disposed his books and papers, and placed his Silence sign in a fairly conspicuous position. This followed his usual custom. Yet his manner of making his arrangements to-night wanted something of his ordinary aggressive confidence. In fact, his promise to give an hour a day to exercise lay on his heart like lead, and the lumps on his eye, large though they were, did not in the least represent the dimensions of the fall he had received at the hands of Mr. Pat.

Fifi was looking a little more fragile than when we saw her last, a little more thin-cheeked, a shade more ethereal-eyed. Her cough was quite bad to-night, and this increased her nervousness. How could she help from disturbing him with that dry tickling going on right along in her throat? It had been a trying day, when everything seemed to go wrong from the beginning. She had waked up feeling very listless and tired; had been late for school; had been kept in for Cicero. In the afternoon she had been going to a tea given to her class at the school, but her mother said her cold was too bad for her to go, and besides she really felt too tired. She hadn't eaten any supper, and had been quite cross with her mother in their talk about the dining-room, which was the worst thing that had happened at all. And now at nine o'clock she wanted to go to bed, but her algebra would not, would not come right, and life was horrible, and she was unfit to live it anyway, and she wished she was ...

"You are crying," stated a calm young voice across the table.

Brought up with a cool round turn, greatly mortified, Fifi thought that the best way to meet the emergency was just to say nothing.

"What is the matter?" demanded the professorial tones.

"Oh, nothing," she said, winking back the tears and trying to smile, apologetically—"just silly reasons. I—I've spent an hour and ten minutes on a problem here, and it won't come right. I'm—sorry I disturbed you."

There was a brief silence. Mr. Queed cleared his throat.

"You cannot solve your problem?"

"I haven't yet," she sniffed bravely, "but of course I will soon. Oh, I understand it very well...."

She kept her eyes stoutly fixed upon her book, which indicated that not for worlds would she interrupt him further. Nevertheless she felt his large spectacles upon her. And presently he astonished her by saying, resignedly—doubtless he had decided that thus could the virginal calm be most surely and swiftly restored:—

"Bring me your book. I will solve your problem."

"Oh!" said Fifi, choking down a cough. And then, "Do you know all about algebra, too?"

It seemed that Mr. Queed in his younger days had once made quite a specialty of mathematics, both lower, like Fifi's, and also far higher. The child's polite demurs were firmly overridden. Soon she was established in a chair at his side, the book open on the table between them.

"Indicate the problem," said Mr. Queed.

Fifi indicated it: No. 71 of the collection of stickers known as Miscellaneous Review. It read as follows:

71. A laborer having built 105 rods of stone fence, found that if he had built 2 rods less a day he would have been 6 days longer in completing the job. How many rods a day did he build?

Queed read this through once and announced: "He built seven rods a day."

Fifi stared. "Why—how in the world, Mr Queed—"

"Let us see if I am right. Proceed. Read me what you have written down."

"Let x equal the number of rods he built each day," began Fifi bravely.

"Proceed."

"Then 105 divided by x equals number of days consumed. And 105 divided by x - 2 equals number of days consumed, if he had built 2 rods less a day."

"Of course."

"And (105 / x - 2) + 6 = number of days consumed if it had taken him six days longer."

"Nothing of the sort."

Fifi coughed. "I don't see why, exactly."

"When the text says 'six days longer,' it means longer than what?"

"Why—longer than ever."

"Doubtless. But you must state it in terms of the problem."

"In terms of the problem," murmured Fifi, her red-brown head bowed over the bewildering book—"in terms of the problem."

"Of course," said her teacher, "there is but one thing which longer can mean; that is longer than the original rate of progress. Yet you add the six to the time required under the new rate of progress."

"I—I'm really afraid I don't quite see. I'm dreadfully stupid, I know—"

"Take it this way then. You have set down here two facts. One fact is the number of days necessary under the old rate of progress; the other is the number of days necessary under the new rate. Now what is the difference between them?"

"Why—isn't that just what I don't know?"

"I can't say what you don't know. This is something that I know very well."

"But you know everything," she murmured.

Without seeking to deny this, Queed said: "It tells you right there in the book."

"I don't see it," said Fifi, nervously looking high and low, not only in the book but all over the room.

The young man fell back on the inductive method: "What is that six then?"

"Oh! Now I see. It's the difference in the number of days consumed—isn't it?"

"Naturally. Now put down your equation. No, no! The greater the rate of progress, the fewer the number of days. Do not attempt to subtract the greater from the less."

Now Fifi figured swimmingly:—

(105/(x-2)) - (105/x) = 6

105x - 105x + 210 = 6x^2 - 12x

6x^2 - 12x - 210 = 0

6x^2 - 12x - 210 = 0

x^2 - 2x - 35 = 0

(x - 7) (X + 5) = 0

x = 7 or -5

She smiled straight into his eyes, sweetly and fearlessly. "Seven! Just what you said! Oh, if I could only do them like you! I'm ever and ever so much obliged, Mr. Queed—and now I can go to bed."

Mr. Queed avoided Fifi's smile; he obviously deliberated.

"If you have any more of these terrible difficulties," he said slowly, "it isn't necessary for you to sit there all evening and cry over them. You ... may ask me to show you."

"Oh, could I really! Thank you ever so much. But no, I won't be here, you see. I didn't mean to come to-night—truly, Mr. Queed—I know I bother you so—only Mother made me."

"Your mother made you? Why?"

"Well—it's right cold upstairs, you know," said Fifi, gathering up her books, "and she thought it might not be very good for my cough...."

Queed glanced impatiently at the girl's delicate face. A frown deepened on his brow; he cleared his throat with annoyance.

"Oh, I am willing," he said testily, "for you to bring your work here whenever it is very cold upstairs."

"Oh, how good you are, Mr. Queed!" cried Fifi, staggered by his nobility. "But of course I can't think of bothering—"

"I should not have asked you," he interrupted her, irritably, "if I had not been willing for you to come."

But for all boarders, their comfort and convenience, Fifi had the great respect which all of us feel for the source of our livelihood; and, stammering grateful thanks, she again assured him that she could not make such a nuisance of herself. However, of course Mr. Queed had his way, as he always did.

This point definitely settled, he picked up his pencil, which was his way of saying, "And now, for heaven's sake—good-night!" But Fifi, her heart much softened toward him, stood her ground, the pile of school-books tucked under her arm.

"Mr. Queed—I—wonder if you won't let me get something to put on your forehead? That bruise is so dreadful—"

"Oh, no! No! It's of no consequence whatever."

"But I don't think you can have noticed how bad it is. Please let me, Mr. Queed. Just a little dab of arnica or witch-hazel—"

"My forehead does very well as it is, I assure you."

Fifi turned reluctantly. "Indeed something on it would make it get well so much faster. I wish you would—"

Ah! There was a thought. As long as he had this bruise people would be bothering him about it. It was a world where a man couldn't even get a black eye without a thousand busybodies commenting on it.

"If you are certain that its healing will be hastened—"

"Positive!" cried Fifi happily, and vanished without more speech.

One Hour a Day to be given to Bodily Exercise.... How long, O Lord, how long!

Fifi returned directly with white cloths, scissors, and two large bottles.

"I won't take hardly a minute—you see! Listen, Mr. Queed. One of these bottles heals fairly well and doesn't hurt at all worth mentioning. That's witch-hazel. The other heals very well and fast, but stings—well, a lot; and that's turpentine. Which will you take?"

"The turpentine," said Mr. Queed in a martyr's voice.

Fifi's hands were very deft. In less than no time, she made a little lint pad, soaked it in the pungent turpentine, applied it to the unsightly swelling, and bound it firmly to the young man's head with a snowy band. In all of Mr. Queed's life, this was the first time that a woman had ministered to him. To himself, he involuntarily confessed that the touch of the girl's hands upon his forehead was not so annoying as you might have expected.

Fifi drew off and surveyed her work sympathetically yet professionally. The effect of the white cloth riding aslant over the round glasses and academic countenance was wonderfully rakish and devil-may-care.

"Do you feel the sting much so far?"

"A trifle," said the Doctor.

"It works up fast to a kind of—climax, as I remember, and then slowly dies away. The climax will be pretty bad—I'm so sorry! But when it's at its worst just say to yourself, 'This is doing me lots and lots of good,' and then you won't mind so much."

"I will follow the directions," said he, squirming in his chair.

"Thank you for letting me do it, and for the algebra, and—good-night."

"Good-night."

He immediately abandoned all pretense of working. To him it seemed that the climax of the turpentine had come instantly; there was no more working up about it than there was about a live red coal. The mordant tooth bit into his blood; he rose and tramped the floor, muttering savagely to himself. But he would not pluck the hateful thing off, no, no—for that would have been an admission that he was wrong in putting it on; and he was never wrong.

So Bylash, reading one of Miss Jibby's works in the parlor, and pausing for a drink of water at the end of a glorious chapter, found him tramping and muttering. His flying look dared Bylash to address him, and Bylash prudently took the dare. But he poured his drink slowly, stealing curious glances and endeavoring to catch the drift of the little Doctor's murmurings.

In this attempt he utterly failed, because why? Obviously because the Doctor cursed exclusively in the Greek and Latin languages.

In five minutes, Queed was upon his work again. Not that the turpentine was yet dying slowly away, as Fifi had predicted that it would. On the contrary it burned like the fiery furnace of Shadrach and Abednego. But One Hour a Day to be given to Bodily Exercise!... Oh, every second must be made to count now, whether one's head was breaking into flame or not.

Whatever his faults or foibles, Mr. Queed was captain of his soul. But the fates were against him to-night. In half an hour, when the sting—they called this conflagration a sting!—was beginning to get endurable and the pencil to move steadily, the door opened and in strode Professor Nicolovius; he, it seemed, wanted matches. Why under heaven, if a man wanted matches, couldn't he buy a thousand boxes and store them in piles in his room?

The old professor apologized blandly for his intrusion, but seemed in no hurry to make the obvious reparation. He drew a match along the bottom of the mantle-shelf, eyeing the back of the little Doctor's head as he did so, and slowly lit a cigar.

"I'm sorry to see that you've met with an accident, Mr. Queed. Is there anything, perhaps, that I might do?"

"Nothing at all,'thanks," said Queed, so indignantly that Nicolovius dropped the subject at once.

The star-boarder of Mrs. Paynter's might have been fifty-five or he might have been seventy, and his clothes had long been the secret envy of Mr. Bylash. He leaned against the mantel at his ease, blowing blue smoke.

"You find this a fairly pleasant place to sit of an evening, I daresay!" he purred, presently.

The back of the young man's head was uncompromisingly stern. "I might as well try to write in the middle of Centre Street."

"So?" said Nicolovius, not catching his drift. "I should have thought that—"

"The interruptions," said Queed, "are constant."

The old professor laughed. "Upon my word, I don't blame you for saying that. The gross communism of a boarding-house ... it does gall one at times! So far as I am concerned, I relieve you of it at once. Good-night."

The afternoon before Nicolovius had happened to walk part of the way downtown with Mr. Queed, and had been favored with a fair amount of his stately conversation. He shut the door now somewhat puzzled by the young man's marked curtness; but then Nicolovius knew nothing about the turpentine.

The broken evening wore on, with progress slower than the laborer's in Problem 71, when he decided to build two rods less a day. At eleven, Miss Miller, who had been to the theatre, breezed in; she wanted a drink of water. At 11.45—Queed's open watch kept accurate tally—there came Trainer Klinker, who, having sought his pupil vainly in the Scriptorium, retraced his steps to rout him out below. At sight of the tall bottle in Klinker's hand Queed shrank, fearing that Fifi had sent him with a second dose of turpentine. But the bottle turned out to contain merely a rare unguent just obtained by Klinker from his friend Smithy, the physical instructor at the Y.M.C.A., and deemed surprisingly effective for the development of the academic bicep.

At last there was blessed quiet, and he could write again. The city slept; the last boarder was abed; the turpentine had become a peace out of pain; only the ticking of the clock filtered into the perfect calm of the dining-room. The little Doctor of Mrs. Paynter's stood face to face with his love, embraced his heart's desire. He looked into the heart of Science and she gave freely to her lord and master. Sprawled there over the Turkey-red cloth, which was not unhaunted by the ghosts of dead dinners, he became chastely and divinely happy. His mind floated away into the empyrean; he saw visions of a far more perfect Society; dreamed dreams of the ascending spiral whose law others had groped at, but he would be the first to formulate; caught and fondled the secret of the whole great Design; reduced it to a rule-of-thumb to do his bidding; bestrode the whole world like a great Colossus....