Queed | Page 7

give her the glad hand, and welcome her into our humble coturee."
Mr. Bylash, who had been thinking of doing that very thing, said rather
shortly that the ladies present quite satisfied him.
"And who do you think brought her around and right up to the door?"
continued William Klinker, taking no notice of their blandishments.
"Hon. West--Charles Gardenia West--"
A scream from Miss Miller applauded the witty hit.

"Oh, it ain't mine," said Mr. Klinker modestly. "I heard a fellow get it
off at the shop the other day. He's a pretty smooth fellow, Charles
Gardenia is--a little too smooth for my way of thinking. A fellow that's
always so smilin'--Oh, you Smithy!" he suddenly yelled out the
window--"Smithy! Hey!--Aw, I can beat the face off
you!--Awright--eight sharp at the same place.--Go on, you fat Mohawk
you!... But say," he resumed to the parlor, "y'know that little woman is
a stormy petrel for this house--that's right. Remember the last time she
was here--the time we had the Porterhouse? Conference in the
dining-room after supper, and the next morning out went the trunks of
that red-head fellow--from Baltimore--what's his name?--Milhiser."
"Well, she hasn't got any call to intrude in my affairs," said Mr. Bylash,
still rather miffed. "I'm here to tell you that!"
"Oh, I ain't speakin' of the reg'lars," answered Klinker, "so don't get
nervous. But say, I got kind of a hunch that here is where the little Doc
gets his."
Klinker's hunch was not without foundation; this very question was
being agitated at that moment in the room just over his head. Miss
Weyland, having passed the parlor portieres with no thought that her
movements were attracting interest on the other side of them, skipped
up the stairs, rapped on her Aunt Jennie's door, and ran breathlessly
into the room. Her aunt was sitting by the bureau, reading a novel from
the circulating library. Though she had been sitting right here since
about four o'clock, only getting up once to light the gas, she had a
casual air like one who is only killing a moment's time between
important engagements. She looked up at the girl's entrance, and an
affectionate smile lit her well-lined face.
"My dear Sharlee! I'm so glad to see you."
They kissed tenderly.
"Oh, Aunt Jennie, tell me! Is he--this man you telephoned me about--is
he a little, small, dried young man, with spectacles and a brown derby,
and needing a hair-cut, and the gravest, drollest manner in the world?

Tell me--is he?"
"My dear, you have described him to the life. Where did you see him?"
Sharlee collapsed upon the bed. Presently she revived and outlined the
situation to Aunt Jennie.
Mrs. Paynter listened with some interest. If humor is a defect, as they
tell us nowadays, she was almost a faultless woman. And in her day she
had been a beauty and a toast. You hear it said generously of a
thousand, but it happened to be true in her case. The high-bred
regularity of feature still survived, but she had let herself go in latter
years, as most women will who have other things than themselves to
think about, and hard things at that. Her old black dress was carelessly
put on; she could look at herself in the mirror by merely leaning
forward an inch or two, and it never occurred to her to do it--an
uncanny thing in a woman.
"I'm sure it sounds quite like him," said Mrs. Paynter, when her niece
had finished. "And so Gardiner West walked around with you. I hope,
my dear, you asked him in to supper? We have an exceptionally nice
Porterhouse steak to-night. But I suppose he would scorn--"
The girl interrupted her, abolishing and demolishing such a thought. Mr.
West would have been only too pleased, she said, but she positively
would not ask him, because of the serious work that was afoot that
night.
"The pleasure I've so far given your little man," laughed she, patting
her aunt's cheeks with her two hands, "has been negligible--I have his
word for that--and to-night it is going to be the same, only more so."
Sharlee arose, took off her coat and furs, laid them on the bed, and
going to the bureau began fixing her hair in the back before the long
mirror. No matter how well a woman looks to the untrained, or man's,
eye, she can always put in some time pleasurably fixing her hair in the
back.

"Now," said Sharlee, "to business. Tell me all about the little
dead-beat."
"It is four weeks next Monday," said Mrs. Paynter, putting a shoe-horn
in her novel to mark the place, "since the young man came to me. He
was from New York, and just off the train. He said that he had