Queed | Page 6

go further just yet. I'd enjoy," said he, "just such
work as yours. There's none finer. You'd like me immensely as your
royal master, I suppose? Want nothing better than to curtsy and
kowtow when I flung out a gracious order?--as, for instance, to shut up
shop and go and take a holiday?"
"Delicious! Though I doubt if anybody in the world could improve on
Mr. Dayne." Suddenly a new thought struck her, and she made a faint
grimace. "There's nothing so very fine about my present work--oh me!
I'll give you that if you want it."
"I see I must look this gift horse over very closely. What is it?"
"They call it dunning."
"I forgot. You started to tell me, and then your dog ran amuck and
began butting perfect strangers all over the place."
"Oh," said she, "it's the commonest little story in the world. All
landladies can tell them to you by the hour. This man has been at Aunt
Jennie's nearly a month, and what's the color of his money she hasn't
the faintest idea. Such is the way our bright young men carve out their
fortunes--the true Gothic architecture! Possibly Aunt Jennie has thrown
out one or two delicate hints, carefully insulated to avoid hurting his
feelings. You know the way our ladies of the old school do--the worst
collectors the world has ever seen. So she telephoned me this
morning--I'm her business woman, you see--asking me to come and
advise her, and I'm coming, and after supper--"
"Well, what'll you do?"
"I'm going to talk with him, with the man. I'm simply going to _collect
that money_. Or if I can't--"
"What's the horrid alternative?"

"I'm going to fire him!"
West laughed merrily. His face always looked most charming when he
smiled. "Upon my word I believe you can do it."
"I have done it, lots of times."
"Ah! And is the ceremony ever attended by scenes of storm and
violence?"
"Never. They march like little lambs when I say the word.
Hay-foot--straw-foot!"
"But then your aunt loses their arrears of board, I suppose."
"Yes, and for that reason I never fire except as a last desperate resort.
Signs of penitence, earnest resolves to lead a better life, are always
noted and carefully considered."
"If you should need help with this customer to-night--not that I think
you will, oh no!--telephone me. I'm amazingly good at handling bright
young men. This is your aunt's, isn't it?"
"No, no--next to the corner over there. O heavens! Look--look!"
West looked. Up the front steps of Miss Weyland's Aunt Jennie's a man
was going, a smallish man in a suit of dusty clothes, who limped as he
walked. The electric light at the corner illumined him perfectly--glinted
upon the spectacles, touched up the stout volume in the coat-pocket,
beat full upon the swaybacked derby, whereon its owner had sat what
time Charlotte Lee Weyland apologized for the gaucherie of Behemoth.
And as they watched, this man pushed open Aunt Jennie's front door,
with never so much as a glance at the door-bell, and stepped as of right
inside.
Involuntarily West and Miss Weyland had halted; and now they stared
at each other with a kind of wild surmise which rapidly yielded to
ludicrous certainty. West broke into a laugh.

"Well, do you think you'll have the nerve to fire him?"

II
_Mrs. Paynter's Boarding-House: which was not founded as an
Eleemosynary Institution._
There was something of a flutter among the gathered boarders when
Miss Weyland was seen to be entering the house, and William Klinker,
who announced the fact from his place by the window, added that that
had ought to help some with the supper. He reminded the parlor that
there had been Porterhouse the last time. Miss Miller, from the sofa,
told Mr. Klinker archly that he was so material. She had only the other
day mastered the word, but even that is more than could be said for Mr.
Klinker. Major Brooke stood by the Latrobe heater, reading the evening
paper under a flaring gas-light. He habitually came down early to get it
before anybody else had a chance. By Miss Miller on the sofa sat Mr.
Bylash, stroking the glossy moustache which other ladies before her
time had admired intensely. Despite her archness Miss Miller had heard
with a pang that Miss Weyland was coming to supper, and her reason
was not unconnected with this same Mr. Bylash. In earlier meetings she
had vaguely noted differences between Mrs. Paynter's pretty niece and
herself. True, she considered these differences all in her own favor, as,
for example, her far larger back pompadour, with the puffs, but you
never could tell about gentlemen.
"I'm surprised," she said to Mr. Klinker, "Mr. Bylash didn't go out to