on Riverside Drive to eject a fourteen-year-old boy from an easy
chair? It seemed to him sometimes that a curious paralysis of the
will came over him out of business hours.

Meanwhile, he had still to find a place where he could read his
Sunday paper.

He stood for a while in thought. Then his brow cleared, and he
began to mount the stairs. Reaching the top floor, he walked
along the passage and knocked on a door at the end of it. From
behind this door, as from behind those below, sounds proceeded,
but this time they did not seem to discourage Mr. Pett. It was
the tapping of a typewriter that he heard, and he listened to it
with an air of benevolent approval. He loved to hear the sound of
a typewriter: it made home so like the office.

"Come in," called a girl's voice.

The room in which Mr. Pett found himself was small but cosy, and
its cosiness--oddly, considering the sex of its owner--had that
peculiar quality which belongs as a rule to the dens of men. A
large bookcase almost covered one side of it, its reds and blues
and browns smiling cheerfully at whoever entered. The walls were
hung with prints, judiciously chosen and arranged. Through a
window to the left, healthfully open at the bottom, the sun
streamed in, bringing with it the pleasantly subdued whirring of
automobiles out on the Drive. At a desk at right angles to this
window, her vivid red-gold hair rippling in the breeze from the
river, sat the girl who had been working at the typewriter. She
turned as Mr. Pett entered, and smiled over her shoulder.