Queed | Page 7

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 been recommended to my house, but would not say by whom, nor could he give references. I did not insist on them, for I can't be too strict, Sharlee, with all the other boarding-places there are and that room standing empty for two months hand-running, and then for three months before that, before Miss Catlett, I mean. The fact is, that I ought to be over on the Avenue, where I could have only the best people. It would be infinitely more lucrative--why, my dear, you should hear Amy Marsden talk of her enormous profits! And Amy, while a dear, sweet little woman, is not clever! I remember as girls--but to go back even of that to the very heart of the matter, who ever heard of a clever Wilkerson? For she, you know, was born ..."
"Never you mind