not fail to keep his word.

Not that Mr. Queed had been inconvenienced by the little delay. The
minute after his landlady's agent left him, he had become immersed in
that great work of his, and there by day and night, he had remained.
Having turned over to the agent the full responsibility for finding work
for him, he no longer had to bother his head about it. The whole matter
dropped gloriously from his mind; he read, wrote, and avoided practicing
sociology with tremendous industry; and thus he might have gone on for
no one knows how long had there not, at five o'clock on the fifth day,
come a knock upon his door.

"Well?" he called, annoyed.

Emma came in with a card. The name, at which the young man barely
glanced, conveyed nothing to him.

"Well? What does he want?"

Emma did not know.

"Oh!" said Mr. Queed, irritably--"tell him to come up, if he must."

The _Post_ director came up--two flights; he knocked; was curtly bidden
to enter; did so.

He stepped into one of the smallest rooms he had ever seen in his life;
about nine by five-and-a-half, he thought. A tiny single bed ran along
one side of it; jammed against the foot of the bed was a tiny table. A
tiny chair stood at the table; behind the chair stood a tiny bureau;