Mrs. Blaine laid down her work and looked up in surprise.

“Something to say to me?” she echoed in amazement, looking inquiringly from her daughter to the visitor.

But Fanny, her face crimson, had already bolted into the kitchen, while Mr. Gillie, his chair tilted backward, a picture of magnificent unconcern, coolly blew smoke rings into the air.

“Something to say to me?” repeated Mrs. Blaine.

“Asch—­ooah!”

His chair suddenly returning to the floor level with a thud that shook the house, Mr. Gillie sneezed violently, a physiological phenomenon which curiously enough never failed to present itself when any extraordinary pressure was put upon his brain cells.  Wiping his watery eyes with a pink-bordered handkerchief—­a color he rather affected—­he began eloquently: 

“Mrs. Blaine, you’re a sensible woman.  I feel I can talk to you plain.  There comes a time in every man’s life when he feels lonesome—­when it looks good to him to have someone round all the time, looking after things—­his dinner, his clothes, and so on.  Why, sometimes I go around for weeks with my suspenders only half fastened, just because I’ve got no one to sew a button on.  It gets on a feller’s nerves—­yes, it does—­until at last he says to himself:  ’Jimmie, my boy, you’ve knocked about alone long enough.  You want to hitch up with some girl and take it easy a bit.’” He stopped a moment to gauge the effect of his words, but as Mrs. Blaine gave no sign that she understood what he was driving at, he proceeded:  “I’m not much good at speechifying.  With the frills all cut and to come to the point, this is what it is:  Fanny seems the kind of girl I’m looking for, and I don’t see I could do any better.  I’ve just asked her, and now it’s kinder up to you—­”

The widow took off her spectacles and gasped.  Could she have heard aright?  He was actually asking for Fanny.  She was amazed not so much at his monumental selfishness and impudence as that Fanny herself could have given him the slightest encouragement.  She fully realized that times had changed since the days when they lifted their heads proudly in the world, but to sink as low as this seemed too terrible, too humiliating.  Yet, after all, could she blame her daughter?  What was her present life, what would be her future, without education, without money—­unless she had someone who could take care of her?  Dissembling her indignation as much as possible, she inquired suavely: 

“This takes me very much by surprise, Mr. Gillie.  You will, of course, allow me leisure to talk It over with my daughter.  May I ask if your means permit you to provide a comfortable home for Fanny—­the kind of home to which she has been accustomed?”

The muscles of Mr. Gillie’s nostrils contracted and for a moment it looked as if his slight frame were again about to be shaken convulsively by a mighty sneeze, but the spasm passed.  He merely coughed loudly to clear his throat.  Then, glancing round the room in which he was sitting, he said: