Queed supped in an impenetrable silence.  The swelling rednesses both above and below his left eye attracted the curious attention of the boarders, but he ignored their glances, and even Klinker forbore to address him.  The meal done, he ascended to his sacred chamber, but not alas, to remain.

For a full week, the Scriptorium had been uninhabitable by night, the hands of authors growing too numb there to write.  On this night, conditions were worse than ever; the usual valiant essay was defeated with more than the usual case.  Queed fared back to his dining-room, as was now becoming his melancholy habit.  And to-night the necessity was exceptionally trying, for he found that the intrusive daughter of the landlady had yet once again spread her mathematics there before him.

Nor could Fifi this time claim misunderstanding and accident.  She fully expected the coming of Mr. Queed, and had been nervously awaiting it.  The state of mind thus induced was not in the least favorable to doing algebra successfully or pleasurably.  No amount of bodily comfort could compensate Fifi for having to have it.  But her mother had ruled the situation to-night with a strong hand and a flat foot.  The bedroom was entirely too cold for Fifi.  She must, positively must, go down to the warm and comfortable dining-room,—­do you hear me, Fifi?  As for Mr. Queed—­well, if he made himself objectionable, Sharlee would simply have to give him another good talking to.

Yet Fifi involuntarily cowered as she looked up and murmured:  “Oh—­good evening!”

Mr. Queed bowed.  In the way of conveying displeasure, he had in all probability the most expressive face in America.

He passed around to his regular place, disposed his books and papers, and placed his Silence sign in a fairly conspicuous position.  This followed his usual custom.  Yet his manner of making his arrangements to-night wanted something of his ordinary aggressive confidence.  In fact, his promise to give an hour a day to exercise lay on his heart like lead, and the lumps on his eye, large though they were, did not in the least represent the dimensions of the fall he had received at the hands of Mr. Pat.

Fifi was looking a little more fragile than when we saw her last, a little more thin-cheeked, a shade more ethereal-eyed.  Her cough was quite bad to-night, and this increased her nervousness.  How could she help from disturbing him with that dry tickling going on right along in her throat?  It had been a trying day, when everything seemed to go wrong from the beginning.  She had waked up feeling very listless and tired; had been late for school; had been kept in for Cicero.  In the afternoon she had been going to a tea given to her class at the school, but her mother said her cold was too bad for her to go, and besides she really felt too tired.  She hadn’t eaten any supper, and had been quite cross with her mother in their talk about the dining-room, which was the worst thing that had happened at all.  And now at nine o’clock she wanted to go to bed, but her algebra would not, would not come right, and life was horrible, and she was unfit to live it anyway, and she wished she was ...