young men. This is your aunt's, isn't it?"
"No, no--next to the corner over there. O heavens! Look--_look!_"
West looked. Up the front steps of Miss Weyland's Aunt Jennie's a man
was going, a smallish man in a suit of dusty clothes, who limped
as he walked. The electric light at the corner illumined him
perfectly--glinted upon the spectacles, touched up the stout volume in
the coat-pocket, beat full upon the swaybacked derby, whereon its owner
had sat what time Charlotte Lee Weyland apologized for the gaucherie of
Behemoth. And as they watched, this man pushed open Aunt Jennie's front
door, with never so much as a glance at the door-bell, and stepped as of
right inside.
Involuntarily West and Miss Weyland had halted; and now they stared at
each other with a kind of wild surmise which rapidly yielded to
ludicrous certainty. West broke into a laugh.
"Well, do you think you'll have the nerve to fire _him_?"
II
_Mrs. Paynter's Boarding-House: which was not founded as an
Eleemosynary Institution._
There was something of a flutter among the gathered boarders when Miss
Weyland was seen to be entering the house, and William Klinker, who
announced the fact from his place by the window, added that that had
ought to help some with the supper. He reminded the parlor that there
had been Porterhouse the last time. Miss Miller, from the sofa, told Mr.
Klinker archly that he was _so_ material. She had only the other day
mastered the word, but even that is more than could be said for Mr.
Klinker. Major Brooke stood by the Latrobe heater, reading the evening
paper under a flaring gas-light. He habitually came down early to get it
before anybody else had a chance. By Miss Miller on the sofa sat Mr.
Bylash, stroking the glossy moustache which other ladies before her time
had admired intensely. Despite her archness Miss Miller had heard with a
pang that Miss Weyland was coming to supper, and her reason was not
unconnected with this same Mr. Bylash. In earlier meetings she had
|