“Oh!...  Does—­he live here, in the city?”

“I have some reason to believe that he does.  It is indeed,” Mr. Queed set forth to his landlady’s agent, “because of that belief that I have come here.  I have assumed, with good grounds, that he would promptly make himself known to me, take charge of things, and pay my board; but though I have been here nearly a month, he has so far made not the slightest move in that direction, unless we count this letter.  Possibly he leaves it to me to find him, but I, on my part, have no time to spare for any such undertaking.  I make the situation clear to you?  Under the circumstances I cannot promise you a steady revenue from my father.  On the other hand, for all that I know, it may be his plan to send me money regularly after this.”

There was a brief pause.  “But—­apart from the money consideration—­have you no interest in finding him?”

“Oh—­if that is all one asks!  But it happens not to be a mere question of my personal whim.  Possibly you can appreciate the fact that finding a father is a tremendous task when you have no idea where he lives, or what he looks like, or what name he may be using.  My time is wholly absorbed by my own work.  I have none to give to a wild-goose chase such as that, on the mere chance that, if found, he would agree to pay my board for the future.”

If he had been less in earnest he would have been grotesque.  As it was, Sharlee was by no means sure that he escaped it; and she could not keep a controversial note out of her voice as she said:—­

“Yours must be a very great work to make you view the finding of your father in that way.”

“The greatest in the world,” he answered, drily.  “I may call it, loosely, evolutionary sociology.”

She was so silent after this, and her expression was so peculiar, that he concluded that his words conveyed nothing to her.

“The science,” he added kindly, “which treats of the origin, nature, and history of human society; analyzes the relations of men in organized communities; formulates the law or laws of social progress and permanence; and correctly applies these laws to the evolutionary development of human civilization.”

“I am familiar with the terms.  And your ambition is to become a great evolutionary sociologist?”

He smiled faintly.  “To become one?”

“Oh!  Then you are one already?”

For answer, Mr. Queed dipped his hand into his inner pocket, produced a large wallet, and from a mass of papers selected a second envelope.

“You mention references.  Possibly these will impress you as even better than friends.”

Sharlee, seated on the arm of Major Brooke’s chair, ran through the clippings:  two advertisements of a well-known “heavy” review announcing articles by Mr. Queed; a table of contents torn from a year-old number of the Political Science Quarterly to the same effect; an editorial from a New York newspaper commenting on one of these articles and speaking laudatorily of its author; a private letter from the editor of the “heavy” urging Mr. Queed to write another article on a specified subject, “Sociology and Socialism.”