sorry for the--mishap--"
"It is of no consequence," he said, with some signs of unrest. "I walk
seldom. Your--pleasure-dog was uninjured, I trust?"
"Thank you. He was never better."
That the appearance of the pleasure-dog's owner as a familiar of his
boarding-house piqued his curiosity not the slightest was only too
evident. He bowed, his eyes returning from steak to book.
"I am obliged to you for getting my supper."
If he had said, "Will you kindly go?" his meaning could hardly have been
more unmistakable. However, Mrs. Paynter's resolute agent held her
ground. Taking advantage of his gross absorption, she now looked the
delinquent boarder over with some care. At first glance Mr. Queed looked
as if he might have been born in a library, where he had unaspiringly
settled down. To support this impression there were his pallid
complexion and enormous round spectacles; his dusty air of premature
age; his general effect of dried-up detachment from his environment. One
noted, too, the tousled mass of nondescript hair, which he wore about a
month too long; the necktie-band triumphing over the collar in the back;
the collar itself, which had a kind of celluloid look and shone with a
blue unwholesome sheen under the gas-light. On the other hand there was
the undeniably trim cut of the face, which gave an unexpected and
contradictory air of briskness. The nose was bold; the long straight
mouth might have belonged to a man of action. Probably the great
spectacles were the turning-point in the man's whole effect. You felt
that if you could get your hands on him long enough to pull those off,
and cut his hair, you might have an individual who would not so surely
have been christened the little Doctor.
These details the agent gathered at her leisure. Meantime here was the
situation, stark and plain; and she, and she alone, must handle it. She
must tell this young man, so frankly engrossed in his mental and
material food, which he ate by his watch, that he must fork over four
times seven-fifty or vacate the premises.... Yes, but how to do it? He
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