summer, a
firm spinster cousin coming in from the country to run the boarders, and
the landlady's agent came to the house no more. Buck Klinket he saw
incessantly; he was the first person in the world, probably, that the
little Doctor had ever really liked. It was Buck who suggested to his
pupil, in October, a particularly novel experience for his soul's
unfolding, which Queed, though failing to adopt it, sometimes dandled
before his mind's eye with a kind of horrified fascination, viz: the
taking of Miss Miller to the picture shows.

But the bulk of his time this autumn was still going to his work on the
_Post_. With ever fresh wonderment, he faced the fact that this work,
first taken up solely to finance the Scriptorium, and next enlarged to
satisfy a most irrational instinct, was growing slowly but surely upon
his personal interest. Certainly the application of a new science to a
new set of practical conditions was stimulating to his intellect; the
panorama of problems whipped out daily by the telegraph had a warmth and
immediateness wanting to the abstractions of closet philosophy. Queed's
articles lacked the Colonel's expert fluency, his loose but telling
vividness, his faculty for broad satire which occasionally set the whole
city laughing. On the other hand, they displayed an exact knowledge of
fact, a breadth of study and outlook, and a habit of plumbing bottom on
any and all subjects which critical minds found wanting in the Colonel's
delightful discourses. And nowadays the young man's articles were
constantly reaching a higher and higher level of readability. Not
infrequently they attracted public comment, not only, indeed not
oftenest, inside the State. Queed knew what it was to be quoted in that
identical New York newspaper from whose pages, so popular for wrapping
around pork chops, he had first picked out his letters.

Of these things the honorable _Post_ directors were not unmindful. They
met on October 10, and upon Colonel Cowles's cordial recommendation,
named Mr. Queed assistant editor of the _Post_ at a salary of fifteen
hundred dollars per annum. And Mr. Queed accepted the appointment
without a moment's hesitation.

So far, then, the magnificent boast had been made good. The event fell
on a Saturday. The Sunday was sunny, windy, and crisp. Free for the day
and regardful of the advantages of open-air pedestrianism, the new
assistant editor put on his hat from the dinner-table and struck for the
ope