ind-faced man with a crisp brown mustache. At the typewriter-table sat
Sharlee Weyland, writing firm letters to thirty-one county almshouse
keepers. It was hard upon noon. Sharlee looked tired and sad about the
eyes. She had not been to supper at Mrs. Paynter's for months, but she
went there nearly every afternoon from the office to see Fifi, who had
been in bed for four weeks.

The Department door opened, with no premonitory knock, and in walked, of
all people, Mr. Queed.

Sharlee came forward very cordially to greet the visitor, and at once
presented him to the Secretary. However Queed dismissed Mr. Dayne very
easily, and gazing at Sharlee sharply through his spectacles, said:

"I should like to speak to you in private a moment."

"Certainly," said Sharlee.

"I'll step into the hall," said kind-faced Mr. Dayne.

"No, no. Indeed you mustn't. We will."

Sharlee faced the young man in the sunlit hail with sympathetic
expectancy and some curiosity in her eyes.

"There is," he began without preliminaries, "a girl at the house where I
board, who has been confined to her bed with sickness for some weeks. It
appears that she has grown thin and weak, so that they will not permit
her to graduate at her school. This involves a considerable
disappointment to her."

"You are speaking of Fifi," said Sharlee, gently.

"That is the girl's name, if it is of any interest to you--"

"You know she is my first cousin."

"Possibly so," he replied, as though to say that no one had the smallest
right to hold him responsible for that. "In this connection, a small
point has arisen upon which advice is required, the advice of a woman.
You happen to be the only other girl I know. This," said Queed, "is why
I have called."

Sharlee felt flattered. "You are most welcome to my advice, Mr. Queed."

He frowned at her through glasses that looked as big and as round as
butter-saucers, with an expression in which impatience contended with
faint embarrassment.

"As her fellow-lodger," he resumed, precisely, "I have been in the habit
of assisting this girl with her studies and have thus come to take an
interest in her--a small interest. During her sickness, it seems, many
of the boarders have been in to call upon her. In a similar way, she has
sent me several messages inviting me to call, but I have not been in
position to accept any of these invitations. It does not follow that,
because I gave some of my time in the past to assisting he