“You know she is my first cousin.”

“Possibly so,” he replied, as though to say that no one had the smallest right to hold him responsible for that.  “In this connection, a small point has arisen upon which advice is required, the advice of a woman.  You happen to be the only other girl I know.  This,” said Queed, “is why I have called.”

Sharlee felt flattered.  “You are most welcome to my advice, Mr. Queed.”

He frowned at her through glasses that looked as big and as round as butter-saucers, with an expression in which impatience contended with faint embarrassment.

“As her fellow-lodger,” he resumed, precisely, “I have been in the habit of assisting this girl with her studies and have thus come to take an interest in her—­a small interest.  During her sickness, it seems, many of the boarders have been in to call upon her.  In a similar way, she has sent me several messages inviting me to call, but I have not been in position to accept any of these invitations.  It does not follow that, because I gave some of my time in the past to assisting her with her lessons, I can afford to give more of it now for purposes of—­of mere sociability.  I make the situation clear to you?”

Sharlee, to whom Fifi had long since made the situation clear, puckered her brow like one carefully rehearsing the several facts.  “Yes, I believe that is all perfectly clear, Mr. Queed.”

He hesitated visibly; then his lips tightened and, gazing at her with a touch of something like defiance, he said:  “On the other hand, I do not wish this girl to think that I bear her ill-will for the time I have given her in the past.  I—­ahem—­have therefore concluded to make her a present, a small gift.”

Sharlee stood looking at him without a reply.

“Well?” said he, annoyed.  “I am not certain what form this small gift had best take.”

She turned away from him and walked to the end of the hall, where the window was.  To Queed’s great perplexity, she stood there looking out for some time, her back toward him.  Soon it came into his mind that she meant to indicate that their interview was over, and this attitude seemed extremely strange to him.  He could not understand it at all.

“I fear that you have failed to follow me, after all,” he called after her, presently.  “This was the point—­as to what form the gift should take—­upon which I wanted a woman’s advice.”

“I understand.”  She came back to him slowly, with bright eyes.  “I know it would please Fifi very much to have a gift from you.  Had you thought at all, yourself, what you would like to give?”

“Yes,” he said, frowning vaguely, “I examined the shop windows as I came down and pretty well decided on something.  Then at the last minute I was not altogether sure.”

“Yes?  Tell me what.”

“I thought I would give her a pair of silk mitts.”

Sharlee’s eyes never left his, and her face was very sweet and grave.