ather round-shouldered;
his head was small, bird-like, thinly thatched with hair of a faded tow
colour; his face was sensitively tinted with the faintest of flushes
beneath a skin of natural pallor, and wore an expression curiously naive
and yet shrewd--an effect manufactured by setting the eyes of a child,
round and dimly blue, in a mask of weathered maturity.

Now while Staff was receiving this impression, Mr. Iff looked sharply
round; their glances crossed. Primarily embarrassed to be caught rudely
staring, Staff was next and thoroughly shocked to detect a distinct if
momentary eclipse of one of Mr. Iff's pale blue eyes. Bluntly, openly,
deliberately, Mr. Iff winked at Mr. Staff, and then, having accomplished
his amazement and discomfiture, returned promptly, twinkling, to the
baiting of his clerk.

"Your age, sir?"

Mr. Iff enquired in simple surprise: "Do you really care to know?"

"It's required, sir, by the--"

"Oh, well--if I must! But, mind you, strictly as man to man: you may
write me down a freeborn American citizen, entitled to vote and more 'n
half white."

"_Beg_ pardon?"

"I say, I am an adult--"

"Oh!" The clerk wrote; then, bored, resumed: "Married or single,
please?"

"I'm a spinster--"

"O-w?"

"Honestly--neither married nor unmarried."

"Then-Q"--resignedly. "Your business--?"

But here Staff's clerk touched the exasperated catechist on the shoulder
and said something inaudible. The response, while equally inaudible,
seemed to convey a sense of profound personal shock. Staff was conscious
that Mr. Iff's clerk glanced reproachfully in his direction, as if to
suggest that he wouldn't have believed it of him.

Divining that he and Mr. Iff were bargaining for the same
accommodations, Staff endeavoured to assume an attitude of distinguished
obliviousness to the entire proceeding; and would have succeeded but for
the immediate and impatient action of Mr. Iff.

That latter, seizing the situation, glanced askance at dignified Mr.
Staff, then smiled a whimsical smile, cocked his small head to one side
and approached him with an open and ingenuous air.

"If it's only a question of which berth," said he, "I'm quite willing to
forfeit my option on the lower, Mr. Staff."

That gentleman started and stared.

"Oh, lord, man!" said Iff tolerantly--"as if your portrait hadn't been
published more times than you can remember!--as if all the world were
unaware of Benjamin Staff, novelist!"

Th