sure when it does expire--" he concluded, and the color
deepened in his dark cheeks. It was his business to know when the lease
on the property expired, and as though reminded by this lapse of
similar failures in other directions, he drew out his watch again and
made sure that he had wound it.

"It expires," said Phil, "on the last day of this next December. I
looked it up yesterday afternoon in that little memorandum book you keep
in your desk."

"I guess that's right. I'm glad you mentioned it. I'll see Bernstein
right away and ask him if he wants to renew the lease. I suppose I ought
to coax a higher rent out of him, but he's been there a long time."

"Oh, he'll stand another fifty and be glad of it. His sign is on all the
fences in the country--'Bernstein's--The Same Old Place.' It would cost
him some money to change that. And you could cheer him up by painting
the front of the building. The interurban is bringing a lot more
business to Montgomery. I've been thinking we ought to do something
about that third floor room where the photograph shop used to be.
Bernstein has an upstairs room in the next building where his tailor
imparts that final deft touch that adjusts ready-made garments to the
most difficult figure. It would be handier for him to conduct the
sartorial transformations in the chamber over his own gate, wouldn't it?
And I don't think we need wait for that photographer to come back from
the penitentiary or wherever he languisheth."

She was minimizing the significance of these suggestions--a significance
that lay, she knew, in the fact of their coming from her--by lapsing
into the absurdities with which she embellished her familiar talk. She
pronounced "languisheth" with a prolongation of the last syllable that
gave to it a characteristic touch of mockery.

"I'd been hoping he'd show up again and cart off his rubbish. But we've
had some fun out of the gallery. If we rent it to Bernstein for his
retouching mysteries, we shan't have any place to develop our
negatives."

"That's so; but maybe we can retouch Bernstein for enough extra to get
them done for us. It's the ducats, my lord, that move my fancy. The
Bernsteins have grown almost disagreeably rich at the same old stand and
it's about time the Kirkwoods were thrusting their talons into the
treasure chest."

Sounds of disaster in the kitchen caused Phil to rise hastily and
disappear through the swing doors. She returned calmly a moment later.