The Department door opened, with no premonitory knock, and in walked, of all people, Mr. Queed.
Sharlee came forward very cordially to greet the visitor, and at once presented him to the Secretary. However Queed dismissed Mr. Dayne very easily, and gazing at Sharlee sharply through his spectacles, said:
"I should like to speak to you in private a moment."
"Certainly," said Sharlee.
"I"ll step into the hall," said kind-faced Mr. Dayne.
"No, no. Indeed you mustn"t. We will."
Sharlee faced the young man in the sunlit hail with sympathetic expectancy and some curiosity in her eyes.
"There is," he began without preliminaries, "a girl at the house where I board, who has been confined to her bed with sickness for some weeks. It appears that she has grown thin and weak, so that they will not permit her to graduate at her school. This involves a considerable disappointment to her."
"You are speaking of Fifi," said Sharlee, gently.
"That is the girl"s name, if it is of any interest to you--"
"You know she is my first cousin."
"Possibly so," he replied, as though to say that no one had the smallest right to hold him responsible for that. "In this connection, a small point has arisen upon which advice is required, the advice of a woman.
You happen to be the only other girl I know. This," said Queed, "is why I have called."
Sharlee felt flattered. "You are most welcome to my advice, Mr. Queed."
He frowned at her through gla.s.ses that looked as big and as round as b.u.t.ter-saucers, with an expression in which impatience contended with faint embarra.s.sment.
"As her fellow-lodger," he resumed, precisely, "I have been in the habit of a.s.sisting this girl with her studies and have thus come to take an interest in her--a small interest. During her sickness, it seems, many of the boarders have been in to call upon her. In a similar way, she has sent me several messages inviting me to call, but I have not been in position to accept any of these invitations. It does not follow that, because I gave some of my time in the past to a.s.sisting her with her lessons, I can afford to give more of it now for purposes of--of mere sociability. I make the situation clear to you?"
Sharlee, to whom Fifi had long since made the situation clear, puckered her brow like one carefully rehearsing the several facts. "Yes, I believe that is all perfectly clear, Mr. Queed."
He hesitated visibly; then his lips tightened and, gazing at her with a touch of something like defiance, he said: "On the other hand, I do not wish this girl to think that I bear her ill-will for the time I have given her in the past. I--ahem--have therefore concluded to make her a present, a small gift."
Sharlee stood looking at him without a reply.
"Well?" said he, annoyed. "I am not certain what form this small gift had best take."
She turned away from him and walked to the end of the hall, where the window was. To Queed"s great perplexity, she stood there looking out for some time, her back toward him. Soon it came into his mind that she meant to indicate that their interview was over, and this att.i.tude seemed extremely strange to him. He could not understand it at all.
"I fear that you have failed to follow me, after all," he called after her, presently. "This was the point--as to what form the gift should take--upon which I wanted a woman"s advice."
"I understand." She came back to him slowly, with bright eyes. "I know it would please Fifi very much to have a gift from you. Had you thought at all, yourself, what you would like to give?"
"Yes," he said, frowning vaguely, "I examined the shop windows as I came down and pretty well decided on something. Then at the last minute I was not altogether sure."
"Yes? Tell me what."
"I thought I would give her a pair of silk mitts."
Sharlee"s eyes never left his, and her face was very sweet and grave.
"White silk ones," said he--"or black either, for that matter, for the price is the same."
"Well," said she, "why did you select mitts, specially?"
"What first attracted me to them," he said simply, "was that they came to precisely the sum I had planned to spend: seventy-five cents."
The little corrugation in Sharlee"s brow showed how carefully she was thinking over the young man"s suggestion from all possible points of view. You could easily follow her thought by her speaking sequence of expressions. Clearly it ran like this: "Mitts--splendid! Just the gift for a girl who"s sick in bed. The one point to consider is, could any other gift possibly be better? No, surely none.... Wait a minute, though! Let"s take this thing slowly and be absolutely sure we"re right before we go ahead.... Run over carefully all the things that are ever used as gifts. Anything there that is better than mitts? Perhaps, after all ... Mitts ... Why, look here, isn"t there one small objection, one trifling want of the fulness of perfection to be raised against the gift of mitts?"
"There"s this point against mitts," said Sharlee slowly. "Fifi"s in bed now, and I"m afraid she"s likely to be there for some time. Of course she could not wear the mitts in bed. She would have to tuck them away in a drawer somewhere. Don"t you think it might be a good idea to give her something that she could enjoy at once--something that would give her pleasure _now_ and so help to lighten these tedious hours while she must be in her room?"
The mitts were the child of Queed"s own brain. Unconsciously he had set his heart on them; but his clock-like mind at once grasped the logic of this argument, and he met it generously.
"Your point is well taken. It proves the wisdom of getting the advice of a woman on such a matter. Now I had thought also of a book--"
"I"ll tell you!" cried Sharlee, nearly bowled over by a brilliant inspiration. "A _great_ many men that I know make it a rule to send flowers to girls that are sick, and--"
"_Flowers!_"
"It does seem foolish--_such_ a waste, doesn"t it?--but really you"ve no idea how mad girls are about flowers, or how much real joy they can bring into a sick-room. And, by changing the water often, and--so on, they last a _long_ time, really an incredible time--"
"You recommend flowers, then? Very well," he said resolutely--"that is settled then. Now as to the kind. I have only a botanical knowledge of flowers--shall we say something in asters, perhaps, chrysanthemums or dahlias? What is your advice as to that?"
"Well, I advise roses."
"Roses--good. I had forgotten them for the moment. White roses?"
A little shiver ran through her. "No, no! Let them be the reddest you can find."
"Next, as to the cost of red roses."
"Oh, there"ll be no trouble about _that_. Simply tell the florist that you want seventy-five cents" worth, and he will give you a fine bunch of them. By the way, I"d better put his name and address down on a piece of paper for you. Be sure to go to this one because I know him, and he"s extremely reliable."
He took the slip from her, thanked her, bowed gravely, and turned to go.
A question had risen involuntarily to the tip of her tongue; it hung there for a breath, its fate in the balance; and then she released it, casually, when another second would have been too late.
"How is your work on the _Post_ going?"
He wheeled as though she had struck him, and looked at her with a sudden odd hardening of the lower part of his face.
"The _Post_ discharged me this morning."
"Oh--"
It was all that she could say, for she knew it very well. She had had it from Colonel Cowles two days before it happened, which was three days after the April meeting of the directors. Charles Gardiner West, who was to have raised his voice in behalf of Mr. Queed on that occasion, happened not to be present at all. Having effected the dissolution of Semple and West, he had gone to the country for a month"s rest, in preparation for that mapping out of collegiate plans which was to precede his tour of Europe. Hence the directors, hearing no protests from intercessors, unanimously bestowed discretion upon the Colonel to replace the transcendental scientist with a juicier a.s.sistant at a larger salary.
"At least," the young man qualified, with a curious mixture of aggressiveness and intense mortification, "the _Post_ will discharge me on the 15th day of May unless I show marked improvement. I believe that improvement was exactly the word the estimable Colonel employed."