oing to clear out," said Lapham. "Call a hack, Dennis. If
you ever come here again, I'll have you arrested. Mind that! Zerrilla,
I shall want you early to-morrow morning."

"Yes, sir," said the girl meekly; she and her mother shrank out after
the porter.

Lapham shut his door without a word.

At lunch the next day Walker made himself amends for Corey's reticence
by talking a great deal. He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have,
more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination
of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "Did you see
that little circus last night?"

"What little circus?" asked Corey in his turn.

"Those two women and the old man. Dennis told me about it. I told him
if he liked his place he'd better keep his mouth shut."

"That was very good advice," said Corey.

"Oh, all right, if you don't want to talk. Don't know as I should in
your place," returned Walker, in the easy security he had long felt
that Corey had no intention of putting on airs with him. "But I'll
tell you what: the old man can't expect it of everybody. If he keeps
this thing up much longer, it's going to be talked about. You can't
have a woman walking into your place of business, and trying to
bulldoze you before your porter, without setting your porter to
thinking. And the last thing you want a porter to do is to think; for
when a porter thinks, he thinks wrong."

"I don't see why even a porter couldn't think right about that affair,"
replied Corey. "I don't know who the woman was, though I believe she
was Miss Dewey's mother; but I couldn't see that Colonel Lapham showed
anything but a natural resentment of her coming to him in that way. I
should have said she was some rather worthless person whom he'd been
befriending, and that she had presumed upon his kindness."

"Is that so? What do you think of his never letting Miss Dewey's name
go on the books?"

"That it's another proof it's a sort of charity of his. That's the
only way to look at it."

"Oh, I'M all right." Walker lighted a cigar and began to smoke, with
his eyes closed to a fine straight line. "It won't do for a
book-keeper to think wrong, any more than a porter, I suppose. But I
guess you and I don't think very different about this thing."

"Not if you think as I do," replied Corey steadily; "and I know you
would do that if you had seen the 'circus' yourself. A man doesn't
treat people who have a disgraceful h