“I can’t deny it, you see!  Because,” she interrupted, raising her eyes and turning upon him a sudden dazzling yet outrageous smile—­“it’s true.”

She skipped away, smiling to herself, happily putting things away and humming an air.  Queed watched her in annoyed silence.  His adamantine gravity inspired her with an irresistible impulse to levity; so the law of averages claimed its innings.

“While you are thinking up what to say,” she rattled on, “might I ask your advice on a sociological problem that was just laid before me by Laura?”

“Well,” he said impatiently, “who is Laura?”

“Laura is the loyal negress who cooks the food for Mrs. Paynter’s bright young men.  Her husband first deserted her, next had the misfortune to get caught while burgling, and is at present doing time, as the saying is.  Now a young bright-skin negro desires to marry Laura, and speaks in urgent tones of the divorce court.  Her attitude is more than willing, but she learns that a divorce, at the lowest conceivable price, will cost fifteen dollars, and she had rather put the money in a suit and bonnet.  But a thought no larger than a man’s hand has crossed her mind, and she said to me just now:  ’I ’clare, Miss Sharly, it do look like, when you got a beau and he want to marry you, and all the time axin’ and coaxin’ an’ beggin’ you to get a div-o’ce, it do look like he ought to pay for the div-o’ce.’  Now what answer has your old science to give to a real heart problem such as that?”

“May I ask that you will put the napkins away, or at the least remain stationary?  It is impossible for me to talk with you while you flutter about in this way.”

At last she came and sat down meekly at the table, her hands clasped before her in rather a devotional attitude, while he, standing, fixed her with his unwavering gaze.

“I speak to you,” he began, uncompromisingly, “as to Mrs. Paynter’s agent.  Professor Nicolovius is going to move in the spring and take an apartment or small house.  He has invited me to share such apartment or house with him.”

“What!  But you declined?”

“On the contrary, I accepted at once.”

Mrs. Paynter’s agent was much surprised and interested by this news, and said so.  “But how in the world,” she went on, puzzled, “did you make him like you so?  I always supposed that he hated everybody he does me, I know.”

“I believe he does hate everybody but me.”

“Strange—­extraordinary!” said Sharlee, picturing the two scholars alone together in their flat, endeavoring to soft-boil eggs on one of those little fixtures over the gas.

“I can see nothing in the least extraordinary in the refusal of a cultured gentleman to hate me.”

“I don’t mean it that way at all-not at all!  But Professor Nicolovius must know cultured gentlemen, congenial roomers, who are nearer his own age—­”