“Like Dr. Warts!” exclaimed Miss Whedell.  “Who’s he?”

“Why, don’t you remember, Clemmy, the doctor that you consulted about your hair?” The widow looked the picture of guilelessness as she asked the question.

Miss Whedell turned slightly red in parts of her face that were not red before, and involuntarily raised her hands to two heavy braids of hair which fronted each ear, and adjusted them.  Then she said, sarcastically: 

“Mr. Maltboy must feel much flattered at being compared with a notorious quack.”

Mrs. Frump, with a laugh spreading all over her gentle face, replied: 

“Oh! of course you call him a quack, because he could not save your—­”

“You are rude, madam,” said Miss Whedell, with emotion.

“And you are silly, miss,” retorted Mrs. Frump, still smiling, “to take offence at nothing.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, madam.”

Greatly to the relief of the three callers, who were seized with a desire to laugh aloud during this short, snapping dialogue, a bell rang, and a new figure entered upon the scene.  The two ladies rose about three inches, and greeted him as Mr. Chiffield.  Mr. Chiffield bowed stiffly, smiled mechanically, and cast a sweeping glance at the three men present.  This glance, and the looks with which it was met, called up a singular train of associations.

Maltboy remembered the new comer as a fellow who had trod on his corns getting into an Amity street stage.  Overtop remembered him as an eccentric individual, who always carried, without the slightest reference to existing weather, an umbrella under his arm, with the point rearward, and held at just the angle to pierce the eye of a person walking incautiously after him.  Overtop had frequently felt a strong inclination to pull the umbrella out from behind, and ask the bearer to carry it in a less threatening manner.

Mr. Chiffield, on the other hand, readily recalled Matthew Maltboy as a suspicious person whom he had seen hanging around an up-town hotel, about a year and a half before (when Maltboy was paying his ineffectual addresses to a cruel Cuban beauty who passed the summer months at that house).  Mr. Chiffield had always supposed him to be a confidence man of superior abilities.

Of Overtop, Mr. Chiffield was vaguely reminiscent.  Unless he was mistaken, that person was the one who wore an entire suit of pepper and salt, including a felt hat, necktie, and gaiters, two summers before.

Mr. Quigg was a novelty in Mr. Chiffield’s eyes; but Mr. Chiffield was well known by sight to Mr. Quigg, who also remembered to have heard that he was a partner in the great drygoods house of Upjack, Chiffield & Co.