many, many
years! In this way I know something about the kind of articles people
here like to read, and about--what is needed to write such articles. I
think I might make a suggestion or two that--would help. Will you
come?"

After somewhat too obvious a consideration, Queed consented. Sharlee
thanked him.

"I'll put my address down on the back of that paper, shall I? And I
think I'll put my name, too, for I don't believe you have the faintest
idea what it is."

"Oh, yes. The name is Miss Charlie Weyland. It appears that you were
named after a boy?"

"Oh, it's only a silly nickname. Here's your little directory back. I'll
be very glad to see you--at half-past eight, shall we say? But, Mr.
Queed--don't come unless you feel sure that I really want to help. For
I'm afraid I'll have to say a good deal that will make you very mad."

He bowed and walked away. Sharlee went to the telephone and called
Bartlett's, the florist. She told Mr. Bartlett that a young man would
come in there in a few minutes--full description of the young
man--asking for seventy-five cents' worth of red roses; Mr. Bartlett
would please give him two dozen roses, and charge the difference to her,
Miss Weyland; the entire transaction to be kept discreetly quiet.

However the transaction was not kept entirely quiet. The roses were
delivered promptly, and became the chief topic of conversation at Mrs.
Paynter's dinner-table. Through an enforced remark of Mr. Queed's, and
the later discursive gossip of the boarders, it became disseminated over
the town that Bartlett's was selling American Beauties at thirty-seven
and a half cents a dozen, and the poor man had to buy ten inches, double
column, in the _Post_ next morning to get himself straightened out and
reestablish Bartlett's familiar quotations.

XII

_More Consequences of the Plan about the Gift, and of how Mr. Queed
drinks his Medicine like a Man; Fifi on Men, and how they do;
Second Corruption of The Sacred Schedule._

Queed's irrational impulse to make Fifi a small gift cost him the heart
of his morning. A call would have been cheaper, after all. Nor was the
end yet. In this world it never is, where one event invariably hangs by
the tail of another in ruthless concatenation. Starting out for Open-air
Pedestrianism at 4.45 that afternoon, the young man was waylaid in the
hail by Mrs. Paynter, at the very door of the big bedroom into which
Fifi had long since been move