Queed | Page 4

who used to live
here, was in my office the other day. I was complimenting him on the
prosperity of the plumbers' supply manufacture--for such is his
mundane occupation, in Schenectady, N.Y. Bobby said that plumbers'
supplies were all well enough, but he made his real money from an
interesting device of his own. There is a lot of building going on in his
neighborhood, it seems, and it occurred to him to send around to the
various owners and offer his private watchman to guard the loose
building materials at night. This for the very reasonable price of $3.50 a
week. It went like hot cakes. 'But,' said I, 'surely your one watchman
can't look after thirty-seven different places.' 'No,' said Bobby, 'but they
think he does.' I laughed and commended his ingenuity. 'But the best
part of the joke,' said he, 'is that I haven't got any watchman at all.'"
Sharlee Weyland laughed gayly. "Bobby could stand for the portrait of
young America."
"You've been sitting at the feet of a staunch old Tory Gamaliel named
Colonel Cowles. I can see that. Ah, me! My garrulity has cost us a
splendid chance to cross. What are all these dreadful things you have
still left to do on your so-called holiday?"

"Well," said she, "first I'm going to Saltman's to buy stationery. Boxes
and boxes of it, for the Department. Bee! Come here, sir! Look how fat
this purse is. I'm going to spend all of that. Bee! I wish I had put him to
leash. He's going to hurt himself in a minute--you see!--"
"Don't you think he's much more likely to hurt somebody else? For a
guess, that queer-looking little citizen in spectacles over the way, who
so evidently doesn't know where he is at."
"Oh, do you think so?--Bee!... Then, after stationery, comes the
disagreeable thing, and yet interesting too. I have to go to my Aunt
Jennie's, dunning."
"You are compelled to dun your Aunt Jennie?"
She laughed. "No--dun for her, because she's too tender-hearted to do it
herself. There's a man there who won't pay his board. Bee!
Bee!--BEE!-O heavens--It's happened!"
And, too quick for West, she was gone into the melee, which
immediately closed in behind her, barricading him away.
What had happened was a small tragedy in its way. The little citizen in
spectacles, who had been standing on the opposite corner vacantly
eating an apple out of a paper bag, had unwisely chosen his moment to
try the crossing. He was evidently an indoors sort of man and no shakes
at crossing streets, owing to the introspective nature of his mind. A
grocery wagon shaved him by an inch. It was doing things to the
speed-limit, this wagon, because a dashing police patrol was close
behind, treading on its tail and indignantly clanging it to turn out,
which it could not possibly do. To avoid erasing the little citizen, the
patrol man had to pull sharply out; and this manoeuvre, as Fate had
written it, brought him full upon the great dog Behemoth, who, having
slipped across the tracks, stood gravely waiting for the flying wagon to
pass. Thus it became a clear case of sauve qui peut, and the devil take
the hindermost. There was nothing in the world for Behemoth to do but
wildly leap under the hoofs for his life. This he did successfully. But on
the other side he met the spectacled citizen full and fair, and down they

went together with a thud.
The little man came promptly to a sitting posture and took stock of the
wreck. His hat he could not see anywhere, the reason being that he was
sitting on it. The paper bag, of course, had burst; some of the apples
had rolled to amazing distances, and newsboys, entire strangers to the
fallen gentleman, were eating them with cries of pleasure. This he saw
in one pained glance. But on the very heels of the dog, it seemed, came
hurrying a girl with marks of great anxiety on her face.
"Can you possibly forgive him? That fire-alarm thing scared him
crazy--he's usually so good! You aren't hurt, are you? I do hope so
much that you aren't?"
The young man, sitting calmly in the street, glanced up at Miss
Weyland with no sign of interest.
"I have no complaint to make," he answered, precisely; "though the
loss of my fruit seems unfortunate, to say the least of it."
"I know! The way they fell on them," she answered, as
self-unconscious as he--"quite as though you had offered to treat! I'm
very much mortified--But--are you hurt? I thought for a minute that the
coal cart was going right over you."
A crowd had sprung up in a wink; a circle of interested faces watching
the