clerk Monday morning. But he'd let me off nights if
I'd put it up to him. Old Chester says----"

Miss Enid's Pre-Raphaelite brows contracted slightly. "Don't you think it
would be more respectful----"

"Sure," agreed Quin; "I didn't mean any harm. I like Mr. Chester. He
asked me to come up to his rooms some night and see his collection of
flutes."

"That was like him," Miss Enid said warmly. "He's always doing kind
things like that. I know his reputation for being diffident and hard to
get acquainted with, but once you get beneath the surface----"

Quin was not in the least interested in Mr. Chester's surface. He sat on
the edge of the table, swinging his foot and staring off into space,
wholly absorbed in the idea of cultivating that newly discovered
intellect of his.

"Say, Miss Enid," he said, impulsively interrupting her eulogy of Mr.
Chester's neglected virtues, "I wish you'd sort of take me in hand. _You_
know what I need better than I do. If you'll get a line on that school
business, I'll start right in, if I have to start in the kindergarten.
Hand out the dope and I'll take it. And whenever you see me doing things
wrong, or saying things wrong, I'd take it as a favor if you'd jack me
up."

Miss Enid smiled ruefully. "Why, Quinby, that is just what we have all
been doing ever since you came. If you weren't the best-natured----"

"Not a bit of it," disclaimed Quin. "Queen Vic lets me have it in the
neck sometimes, but that's nothing. I've learned more since I've been in
this house than I ever learned in all my life put together. Why,
sometimes I don't hardly know myself!"

"Two negatives, Quinby, make an affirmative," suggested Miss Enid primly;
and thus his higher education began.

Miss Enid was right when she said his mind was above the average. Its one
claim to superiority lay in the fact that it had received the little
training it had at first hand. What he knew of geography he knew, not
from maps, but from actual observation in many parts of the world. Higher
mathematics were unknown to him, but through years of experience he had
learned to solve the most difficult of all problems--that of making ends
meet. He had learned astronomy from a Norwegian sailor, as they lay on
the deck of a Pacific transport night after night in the southern seas.
He had even tackled literature during his six months in hospital, when he
had plowed through all the books the wards provided from Dante's
"Inferno" to "Dere