around with you. I hope, my
dear, you asked him in to supper? We have an exceptionally nice
Porterhouse steak to-night. But I suppose he would scorn--"

The girl interrupted her, abolishing and demolishing such a thought. Mr.
West would have been only too pleased, she said, but she positively
would not ask him, because of the serious work that was afoot that
night.

"The pleasure I've so far given your little man," laughed she, patting
her aunt's cheeks with her two hands, "has been negligible--I have his
word for that--and to-night it is going to be the same, only more so."

Sharlee arose, took off her coat and furs, laid them on the bed, and
going to the bureau began fixing her hair in the back before the long
mirror. No matter how well a woman looks to the untrained, or man's,
eye, she can always put in some time pleasurably fixing her hair in the
back.

"Now," said Sharlee, "to business. Tell me all about the little
dead-beat."

"It is four weeks next Monday," said Mrs. Paynter, putting a shoe-horn
in her novel to mark the place, "since the young man came to me. He was
from New York, and just off the train. He said that he had been
recommended to my house, but would not say by whom, nor could he give
references. I did not insist on them, for I can't be too strict,
Sharlee, with all the other boarding-places there are and that room
standing empty for two months hand-running, and then for three months
before that, before Miss Catlett, I mean. The fact is, that I ought to
be over on the Avenue, where I could have only the best people. It would
be infinitely more lucrative--why, my dear, you should hear Amy Marsden
talk of her enormous profits! And Amy, while a dear, sweet little woman,
is not clever! I remember as girls--but to go back even of that to the
very heart of the matter, who ever heard of a clever _Wilkerson_? For
she, you know, was born ..."

"Never you mind Mrs. Marsden, Aunt Jennie," said the girl, gently
drawing her back to the muttons,--"we'll make lots more money than she
some day. So you gave him the room, then?"

"Yes, the room known as the third hall back. A small, neat, economical
room, entirely suitable for a single gentleman. I gave him my lowest
price, though I must say I did not dream then that he would spend all
his time in his room, apparently having no downtown occupation, which is
certainly not what one expects from gentlemen, who get low terms on the
silent understanding that they