If he had said, “Will you kindly go?” his meaning could hardly have been more unmistakable.  However, Mrs. Paynter’s resolute agent held her ground.  Taking advantage of his gross absorption, she now looked the delinquent boarder over with some care.  At first glance Mr. Queed looked as if he might have been born in a library, where he had unaspiringly settled down.  To support this impression there were his pallid complexion and enormous round spectacles; his dusty air of premature age; his general effect of dried-up detachment from his environment.  One noted, too, the tousled mass of nondescript hair, which he wore about a month too long; the necktie-band triumphing over the collar in the back; the collar itself, which had a kind of celluloid look and shone with a blue unwholesome sheen under the gas-light.  On the other hand there was the undeniably trim cut of the face, which gave an unexpected and contradictory air of briskness.  The nose was bold; the long straight mouth might have belonged to a man of action.  Probably the great spectacles were the turning-point in the man’s whole effect.  You felt that if you could get your hands on him long enough to pull those off, and cut his hair, you might have an individual who would not so surely have been christened the little Doctor.

These details the agent gathered at her leisure.  Meantime here was the situation, stark and plain; and she, and she alone, must handle it.  She must tell this young man, so frankly engrossed in his mental and material food, which he ate by his watch, that he must fork over four times seven-fifty or vacate the premises....  Yes, but how to do it?  He could not be much older than she herself, but his manner was the most impervious, the most impossible that she had ever seen.  “I’m grim and I’m resolute,” she said over to herself; but the splendid defiance of the motto failed to quicken her blood.  Not even the recollection of the month’s sponge for board and the house-rent due next week spurred her to action.  Then she thought of Fifi, whom Mr. Queed had packed off sobbing for his good pleasure, and her resolution hardened.

“I’m afraid I must interrupt your reading for a moment,” she said quietly.  “There is something I want to say....”

He glanced up for the second time.  There was surprise and some vexation in the eyes behind his circular glasses, but no sign of any interest.

“Well?”

“When my aunt introduced you to me just now she did not—­did not identify me as she should—­”

“Really, does it make any difference?”

“Yes, I think it does.  You see, I am not only her niece, but her business woman, her agent, as well.  She isn’t very good at business, but still she has a good deal of it to be done.  She runs this boarding-place, and people of various kinds come to her and she takes them into her house.  Many of these people are entirely unknown to her.  In this way trouble sometimes arises.  For instance people come now and then who—­how shall I put it?—­are very reserved about making their board-payments.  My aunt hardly knows how to deal with them—­”