Queed had shown no signs of coming down.  Never had he waited so long as this when he meant to claim the dining-room.  Mrs. Paynter’s room, nominally heated by a flume from the Latrobe heater in the parlor, was noticeably coolish on a wintry night.  Besides, there was no table in it, and everybody knows that algebra is hard enough under the most favorable conditions, let alone having to do it on your knee.  It seemed absolutely safe; Fifi had yielded to the summons of the familiar comforts; and now—­

“Oh—­how do you do?” she was saying in a frightened voice.

Mr. Queed bowed, indignantly.  Silently he marched to his chair, the one just opposite, and sat down in offended majesty.  To Fifi it seemed that to get up at once and leave the room, which she would gladly have done, would be too crude a thing to do, too gross a rebuke to the little Doctor’s Ego.  She was wrong, of course, though her sensibilities were indubitably right.  Therefore she feigned enormous engrossment in her algebra, and struggled to make herself as small and inoffensive as she could.

The landlady’s daughter wore a Peter Thompson suit of blue serge, which revealed a few inches of very thin white neck.  She was sixteen and reddish-haired, and it was her last year at the High School.  The reference is to Fifi’s completion of the regular curriculum, and not to any impending promotion to a still Higher School.  She was a fond, uncomplaining little thing, who had never hurt anybody’s feelings in her life, and her eyes, which were light blue, had just that look of ethereal sweetness you see in Burne-Jones’s women and for just that same reason.  Her syrup she took with commendable faithfulness; the doctor, in rare visits, spoke cheerily of the time when she was to be quite strong and well again; but there were moments when Sharlee Weyland, looking at her little cousin’s face in repose, felt her heart stop still.

Fifi dallied with her algebra, hoping and praying that she would not have to cough.  She had been very happy all that day.  There was no particular reason for it; so it was the nicest kind of happiness, the kind that comes from inside, which even the presence of the little Doctor could not take away from her.  Heaven knew that Fifi harbored no grudge against Mr. Queed, and she had not forgotten what Sharlee said about being gentle with him.  But how to be gentle with so austere a young Socrates?  Raising her head upon the pretext of turning a page, Fifi stole a hurried glance at him.

The first thing Mr. Queed had done on sitting down was to produce his placard, silently congratulating himself on having brought it.  Selecting the book which he would be least likely to need, he shoved it well forward, nearly halfway across the table, and against the volume propped up his little pasteboard sign, the printed part staring straight toward Fifi.  The sign was an old one which he had chanced to pick up years ago at the Astor Library.  It read: