hat his sanctum was
altogether uninhabitable. Bitterly he faced the knowledge that he must
fare forth into the outer world of the dining-room that night; irritably
he gathered up his books and papers.

Half-way down the first flight a thought struck Queed, and he retraced
his steps. The last time that he had been compelled to the dining-room
the landlady's daughter had been there--(it was all an accident, poor
child! Hadn't she vowed to herself never to intrude on the little Doctor
again?)--and, stupidly breaking the point of her pencil, had had the
hardihood to ask him for the loan of his knife. Mr. Queed was determined
that this sort of thing should not occur again. A method for enforcing
his determination, at once firm and courteous, had occurred to him. One
could never tell when trespassers would stray into the dining-room--his
dining-room by right of his exalted claim. Rummaging in his bottom
bureau drawer, he produced a placard, like a narrow little sign-board,
and tucking it under his arm, went on downstairs.

The precaution was by no means superfluous. Disgustingly enough the
landlady's daughter was once more in his dining-room before him, the
paraphernalia of her algebra spread over half the Turkey-red cloth. Fifi
looked up, plainly terrified at his entrance and his forbidding
expression. It was her second dreadful blunder, poor luckless little
wight! She had faithfully waited a whole half-hour, and Mr. Queed had
shown no signs of coming down. Never had he waited so long as this when
he meant to claim the dining-room. Mrs. Paynter's room, nominally heated
by a flume from the Latrobe heater in the parlor, was noticeably coolish
on a wintry night. Besides, there was no table in it, and everybody
knows that algebra is hard enough under the most favorable conditions,
let alone having to do it on your knee. It seemed absolutely safe; Fifi
had yielded to the summons of the familiar comforts; and now--

"Oh--how do you do?" she was saying in a frightened voice.

Mr. Queed bowed, indignantly. Silently he marched to his chair, the one
just opposite, and sat down in offended majesty. To Fifi it seemed that
to get up at once and leave the room, which she would gladly have done,
would be too crude a thing to do, too gross a rebuke to the little
Doctor's Ego. She was wrong, of course, though her sensibilities were
indubitably right. Therefore she feigned enormous engrossment in her
algebra, and struggled to make herself