himself at a tete-a-tete repast with the admiring and complaisant fair;
there was a 'cabinet particulier' in a certain San Francisco restaurant
which had listened to their various vanities and professions of undying
faith; he might have recalled certain festal rendezvous with a widow
whose piety and impeccable reputation made it a moral duty for her to
come to him only in disguise; it was but a few days ago that he had
been let privately into the palatial mansion of a high official for a
midnight supper with a foolish wife. It was not strange, therefore, that
he should be alone here, secretly, with a member of that indiscreet,
loving sex. But that he should be sitting there in a cheap negro laundry
with absolutely no sentiment of any kind towards the heavy-haired,
freckle-faced country schoolgirl opposite him, from whom he sought
and expected nothing, and ENJOYING it without scorn of himself or his
companion, to use his own expression, "got him." Presently he rose and
sauntered to the table with shining eyes.

"Well, what do you think of Aunt Chloe's shebang?" he asked smilingly.

"Oh, it's so sweet and clean and homelike," said the girl quickly. At
any other time he would have winced at the last adjective. It struck him
now as exactly the word.

"Would you like to live here, if you could?"

Her face brightened. She put the teapot down and gazed fixedly at Jack.

"Because you can. Look here. I spoke to Hannibal about it. You can have
the two front rooms if you want to. One of 'em is big enough and light
enough for a studio to do your work in. You tell that nigger what you
want to put in 'em, and he's got my orders to do it. I told him about