r with her
lessons, I can afford to give more of it now for purposes of--of mere
sociability. I make the situation clear to you?"

Sharlee, to whom Fifi had long since made the situation clear, puckered
her brow like one carefully rehearsing the several facts. "Yes, I
believe that is all perfectly clear, Mr. Queed."

He hesitated visibly; then his lips tightened and, gazing at her with a
touch of something like defiance, he said: "On the other hand, I do not
wish this girl to think that I bear her ill-will for the time I have
given her in the past. I--ahem--have therefore concluded to make her a
present, a small gift."

Sharlee stood looking at him without a reply.

"Well?" said he, annoyed. "I am not certain what form this small gift
had best take."

She turned away from him and walked to the end of the hall, where the
window was. To Queed's great perplexity, she stood there looking out for
some time, her back toward him. Soon it came into his mind that she
meant to indicate that their interview was over, and this attitude
seemed extremely strange to him. He could not understand it at all.

"I fear that you have failed to follow me, after all," he called after
her, presently. "This was the point--as to what form the gift should
take--upon which I wanted a woman's advice."

"I understand." She came back to him slowly, with bright eyes. "I know
it would please Fifi very much to have a gift from you. Had you thought
at all, yourself, what you would like to give?"

"Yes," he said, frowning vaguely, "I examined the shop windows as I came
down and pretty well decided on something. Then at the last minute I was
not altogether sure."

"Yes? Tell me what."

"I thought I would give her a pair of silk mitts."

Sharlee's eyes never left his, and her face was very sweet and grave.

"White silk ones," said he--"or black either, for that matter, for the
price is the same."

"Well," said she, "why did you select mitts, specially?"

"What first attracted me to them," he said simply, "was that they came
to precisely the sum I had planned to spend: seventy-five cents."

The little corrugation in Sharlee's brow showed how carefully she was
thinking over the young man's suggestion from all possible points of
view. You could easily follow her thought by her speaking sequence of
expressions. Clearly it ran like this: "Mitts--splendid! Just the gift
for a girl who's sick in bed. The one point to consider is, could any
other