"I'll call on him--at your aunt's, shall I?--to-day if I can. Why, not a
bit of it! The thanks are quite the other way. He may turn out another
Charles A. Dana, cleverly disguised. When are you going to have another
half-holiday up there?"

Sharlee left the telephone thinking that Mr. West was quite the nicest
man she knew. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred, in his position, would
have said, "Send him to see me." Mr. West had said, "I'll call on him at
your aunt's," and had absolutely refused to pose as the gracious
dispenser of patronage. However, a great many people shared Sharlee's
opinion of Charles Gardiner West. One of them walked into his office at
that very moment, also petitioning for something, and West received him
with just that same unaffected pleasantness of manner which everybody
found so agreeable. But this one's business, as it happened, completely
knocked from Mr. West's head the matter of Mr. Queed. In fact, he never
gave it another thought. The following night he went to New York with a
little party of friends, chiefly on pleasure bent; and, having no
particularly frugal mind, permitted himself a very happy day or so in
the metropolis. Hence it happened that Sharlee, learning from her aunt
that no Post directors had called forcing remunerative work on Mr.
Queed, made it convenient, about five days after the telephone
conversation, to meet Mr. West upon the street, quite by accident. Any
girl can tell you how it is done.

"Oh, by the way," she said in the most casual way, "shall I send my
little Doctor Queed to call upon you some day?"

West was agreeably contrite; abused himself for a shiftless lackwit who
was slated for an unwept grave; promised to call that very day; and,
making a memorandum the instant he got back to the office, this time did