, and went. The nurse did nothing but stayed.
Queed would have dismissed her at once, except that that would have been
bad economy; he must keep his own more valuable time free for the
earning of every possible penny. To run the house, he had, for the
present, his four hundred and fifty dollars in bank, saved out of his
salary. This, he figured, would last nine weeks. Possibly Surface would
last longer than that: that remained to be seen.

Late on a March afternoon, Queed finished a review article--his second
since he had left the newspaper, four days before--and took it himself
to the post-office. He wanted to catch the night mail for the North; and
besides his body, jaded by two days' confinement, cried aloud for a
little exercise. His fervent desire was to rush out all the articles
that were in him, and get money for them back with all possible speed.
But he knew that the market for this work was limited. He must find
other work immediately; he did not care greatly what kind it was,
provided only that it was profitable. Thoughts of ways and means, mostly
hard thoughts, occupied his mind all the way downtown. And always it
grew plainer to him how much he was going to miss, now of all times, his
eighteen hundred a year from the _Post_.

In the narrowest corridor of the post-office--like West in the Byrds'
vestibule--he came suddenly face to face with Sharlee Weyland.

The meeting was unwelcome to them both, and both their faces showed it.
Sharlee had told herself, a thousand times in a week, that she never
wanted to see Mr. Queed again. Queed had known, without telling himself
at all, that he did not want to see Miss Weyland, not, at least, till he
had more time to think. But Queed's dread of seeing the girl had nothing
to do with what was uppermost in her mind--the _Post's_ treacherous
editorial. Of course, West had long since made that right as he had
promised, as he would have done with no promising. But--ought he to
tell her now, or to wait?... And what would she say when she knew the
whole shameful truth about him--knew that for nearly a year Surface
Senior and Surface Junior, shifty father and hoodwinked son, had been
living fatly on the salvage of her own plundered fortune?

She would have passed him with a bow, but Queed, more awkward than she,
involuntarily halted. The dingy gas-light, which happened to be behind
him, fell full upon her face, and he said at once:--

"How do you do?--not very well, I fear.