in all this they could not know, but he was perhaps himself doubtful,
and he consented to let them send for the doctor, who, when he came,
behaved like anything but the steadfast friend that Mrs. Lander supposed
she had bought in him. He advised paying the account without regard to
its justice, as the shortest and simplest way out of the trouble; but
Mrs. Lander, who saw him talking amicably and even respectfully with the
landlord, when he ought to have treated him as an extortionate scamp,
returned to her former ill opinion of him; and the vice-consul now
appeared the friend that Doctor Tradonico had falsely seemed. The doctor
consented, in leaving her to her contempt of him, to carry a message to
the vice-consul, though he came back, with his finger at the side of his
nose, to charge her by no means to betray his bold championship to the
landlord.

The vice-consul made none of those shows of authority which Mrs. Lander
had expected of him. She saw him even exchanging the common decencies
with the landlord, when they met; but in fact it was not hard to treat
the smiling and courteous rogue well. In all their disagreement he had
looked as constantly to the comfort of his captives as if they had been
his chosen guests. He sent Mrs. Lander a much needed refreshment at the
stormiest moment of her indignation, and he deprecated without retort
the denunciations aimed at him in Italian which did not perhaps carry
so far as his conscience. The consul talked with him in a calm scarcely
less shameful than that of Dr. Tradonico; and at the end of their parley
which she had insisted upon witnessing, he said:

"Well, Mrs. Lander, you've got to stand this gouge or you've got to
stand a law suit. I think the gouge would be cheaper in the end. You
see, he's got a right to his month's rent."

"It ain't the rent I ca'e for: it's the candles, and the suvvice, and
the things he says we broke. It was undastood that everything was to be
in the rent, and his two old chaias went to pieces of themselves when
we tried to pull 'em out from the wall; and I'll neva pay for 'em in the
wo'ld."

"Why," the vice-consul pleaded, "it's only about forty francs for the
whole thing--"

"I don't care if it's only fotty cents. And I must say, Mr. Bennam,
you're about the strangest vice-consul, to want me to do it, that I eva
saw."

The vice-consul laughed unresentfully. "Well, shall I send you a
lawyer?"

"No!" Mrs. Lander retorted; and after a mome