"Well, I mean, you know, he doesn't look like an ink-slinger; he looks like some sort of a doer. He hasn't that dreamy expression. He sees with both eyes at once. In other words, he seems to be all there." "Your idea of literary men is a disgrace to your education, Jimps. Think of the author-soldiers26 and author-engineers—and author-Presidents of the United States," she ended triumphantly. 26 "It doesn't matter," admitted Stuart. "The thing that does is that he's coming here. I can't say that appeals to me. How in time did he come to apply?" Georgiana told him briefly. Stuart looked gloomy. "That's all right," he said, "as long as he confines himself to being company for your father. But if he takes to being company for you—lookout!" "Absurd! He's years older than I, and he said he would be working very hard. I shall see nothing of him except at the table. Heavens! don't grudge us anything that promises to relieve the monotony of our lives even a little bit." Stuart whistled. "Monotony, eh? In spite of all my visits? All right. But I'd be just as well pleased if he wore skirts. And mind you—your Uncle Jimps is coming over evenings just as often as and a little oftener than if you didn't have this literary light burning on your hearthstone. See?" He went away, his thick fair hair, uncapped, shining in the morning sunlight, his arm waving a friendly farewell back at the window, where a white cloth flapped in reply. "Dear old boy!" thought the young woman affectionately; "what should I do without him?" That afternoon, just before the supper hour, the boarder's trunk arrived. It was borne upstairs by27 the village baggageman, complaining bitterly of its weight. It was an aristocratic-looking trunk, and it bore labels which indicated that it was a traveled trunk. Shortly afterward the boarder himself appeared and was allowed to betake himself at once to his room, from which he emerged at the call of the bell, and came promptly down. Meeting Mr. Warne limping slowly through the hall, he offered his arm, and in the dining-room placed his host in his chair with the gentle deference so welcome from a younger man to an older. 27 Georgiana, as she served one of the undeniably simple but toothsome meals for the cooking of which she was equipped by many years'
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