ould have been expected. He
had a bedroom, and moved a large secretary desk into it, and sat there
all day looking at figures. If he ever wanted to make an inquiry, he
wrote it on the tablets, and in the evening had it read and answered.
Agnes was a good deal of the time preoccupied, and Podge Byerly, who
wrote as neatly as copper-plate, answered these inquiries, and conducted
a little conversation of her own. Podge was a slender blonde, with fine
blue eyes and a mischievous, sylph-like way of coming and going. Her
freedom of motion and address seemed to concern the stranger. One day
she wrote, after putting down the answer to a business inquiry:

"Are you married?"

He hesitated some time and wrote back, "I hope not."

She retorted, "Could one forget if one was married?"

He replied on the same tablet: "Not when he tried."

Podge rubbed it all off, and thought a minute, and then concluded that
evening's correspondence:

"You are an old tease!"

The next morning, as usual, she wrapped herself up warmly and took the
omnibus for her school, and saw him watching her out of the upper
window. That night, instead of any inquiries, he stalked down in his
worked slippers--the dead man's--and long dressing gown, and, after
smiling at all, took Podge Byerly's hand and looked at it. This time he
spoke in a sweet, modulated voice,

"Very pretty!"

She was about to reply, when he gave her the ivory tablet, and put his
finger on his lip.

She wrote, "Did you ever fight a duel?"

He shook his head "No."

She wrote again, "What else do they do in Arkansas?"

He replied, "They love."

Then Mr. Duff Salter sneezed very loudly, "Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!"
Podge ran off at such a serious turn of responses, but was too much of a
woman not to be lured back of her own will. He wrote later in the
evening this touching query:

"How do the birds sing now? Are they all dumb?"

She answered, "Many can hear who never heard them."

He wrote again, "Are you suspicious?"

She replied, "_Very_. Are you?"

He shook his head "No."

"I believe he _is_," said Podge, turning to Agnes, who had entered. "He
looks as if he had asked that question of himself."

Duff Salter seized his handkerchief and sneezed into it, "Jericho-o!
Jericho-wo!"

Podge was sure he was suspicious the next night when she read on his
tablets the rather imputative remark,

"Is there anything demoralizing in teaching public schools?"

She replied tartly