Sharlee started, almost violently, and colored perceptibly.  If a text-book in differential calculus, upon the turning of a page, had thrown problems to the winds and begun gibbering purple poems of passion, she could not have been more completely taken aback.  However, there was no mistaking the utter and veracious impersonality of his tone.

“Oh, do you think so?  I’m very glad, because I’m afraid not many people do....”

Mr. Queed remained silent.  So far, so good; the conversation stood in a position eminently and scientifically correct; but Sharlee could not for the life of her forbear to add:  “But I had no idea you ever noticed people’s looks.”

“So far as I remember, I never did before.  I think it was the appearance of your eyes as you looked out over the plain that attracted my attention.  Then, looking closer, I noticed that you are beautiful.”

The compliment was so unique and perfect that another touch could only spoil it.  Sharlee immediately changed the subject.

“Oh, Mr. Queed, has the Department you or Colonel Cowles to thank for the editorial about the reformatory this morning?”

“Both of us.  He suggested it and I wrote it.  So you really cannot tell us apart?”

She shook her head.  “All this winter we shall work preparing the State’s mind for this institution, convincing it so thoroughly that when the legislature meets again, it simply will not dare to refuse us.  When I mention we and us, understand that I am speaking to you Departmentally.  After that there are ten thousand other things that we want to do.  But everything is so immortally slow!  We are not allowed to raise our fingers without a hundred years’ war first.  Don’t you ever wish for money—­oceans and oceans of lovely money?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“I do.  I’d pepper this State with institutions.  Did you know,” she said sweetly, “that I once had quite a little pot of money?  When I was one month old.”

“Yes,” said Queed, “I knew.  In fact, I had not been here a week before I heard of Henry G. Surface.  Major Brooke speaks of him constantly, Colonel Cowles occasionally.  Do you,” he asked, “care much about that?”

“Well,” said Sharlee, gently, “I’m glad my father never knew.”

From half a mile away, behind the bellying woodland, a faint hoot served notice that the city-bound car was sweeping rapidly toward them.  It was on the tip of Queed’s tongue to remind Miss Weyland that, in the case of Fifi, she had taken the ground that the dead did know what was going on upon earth.  But he did not do so.  The proud way in which she spoke of my father threw another thought uppermost in his mind.

“Miss Weyland,” he said abruptly, “I made a—­confidence to you, of a personal nature, the first time I ever talked with you.  I did not, it is true, ask you to regard it as a confidence, but—­”

“I know,” interrupted Sharlee, hurriedly.  “But of course I have regarded it in that way, and have never spoken of it to anybody.”