ntarily cowered as she looked up and murmured: "Oh--good
evening!"

Mr. Queed bowed. In the way of conveying displeasure, he had in all
probability the most expressive face in America.

He passed around to his regular place, disposed his books and papers,
and placed his _Silence_ sign in a fairly conspicuous position. This
followed his usual custom. Yet his manner of making his arrangements
to-night wanted something of his ordinary aggressive confidence. In
fact, his promise to give an hour a day to exercise lay on his heart
like lead, and the lumps on his eye, large though they were, did not in
the least represent the dimensions of the fall he had received at the
hands of Mr. Pat.

Fifi was looking a little more fragile than when we saw her last, a
little more thin-cheeked, a shade more ethereal-eyed. Her cough was
quite bad to-night, and this increased her nervousness. How could she
_help_ from disturbing him with that dry tickling going on right along
in her throat? It had been a trying day, when everything seemed to go
wrong from the beginning. She had waked up feeling very listless and
tired; had been late for school; had been kept in for Cicero. In the
afternoon she had been going to a tea given to her class at the school,
but her mother said her cold was too bad for her to go, and besides she
really felt too tired. She hadn't eaten any supper, and had been quite
cross with her mother in their talk about the dining-room, which was the
worst thing that had happened at all. And now at nine o'clock she wanted
to go to bed, but her algebra would not, _would not_ come right, and
life was horrible, and she was unfit to live it anyway, and she wished
she was ...

"You are crying," stated a calm young voice across the table.

Brought up with a cool round turn, greatly mortified, Fifi thought that
the best way to meet the emergency was just to say nothing.

"What is the matter?" demanded the professorial tones.

"Oh, nothing," she said, winking back the tears and trying to smile,
apologetically--"just silly reasons. I--I've spent an hour and ten
minutes on a problem here, and it won't come right. I'm--sorry I
disturbed you."

There was a brief silence. Mr. Queed cleared his throat.

"You cannot solve your problem?"

"I haven't _yet_," she sniffed bravely, "but of course I will _soon_.
Oh, I understand it very well...."

She kept her eyes stoutly fixed upon her book, which indicated that not
for worlds would s