accomplished his amazement and discomfiture, returned promptly, twinkling, to the baiting of his clerk.

[Pg 8]

“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[Pg 9] his direction, as if to suggest that he wouldn’t have believed it of him.

[Pg 9]

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.”

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