"Where's Jones?" persisted Fox, banging away at the door again.
"There's no Jones here, you fool!" answered the woman hotly.
"Yes there is, too," insisted Fox. "Landlord told me so."
"Well," parried the female, raising her voice again, "Jones ain't in the wheat trade at all; he's a professor of music; and besides that, he ain't in here, either."
"Oh, beg pardon, ma'am," said Fox apologetically, "It isn't your Jones I want this time, then. Hope I haven't disturbed you, madam," and he walked away, having clinched the matter quite thoroughly enough for any twelve honest and true men under the sun.
Mrs. Winslow stuck her head out of the door, launched a threat, coupled with a well-defined oath, against Fox, who was leisurely strolling along the hall, to the effect that he ought to be ashamed of himself for "insulting a defenceless woman in that way, and that if he came there again she would have him arrested." To which he cheerily responded, "No offence meant, ma'am; 'fraid the wheat'd spoil, ye see;" and as he went whistling down the stairs, she slammed the door, locked it, drew the trembling Le Compte from under the bed, and amid a chime of crockery set him upon his feet again with a snap to it, and then threw herself into a rocking-chair and burst into tears, insisting that she was the most abused woman on the face of earth, and that Le Compte, with his "Sacrés!" and "Diables!" hadn't the sense of a moth or the muscle of an oyster, or he would have followed the brute and given him a sound beating!
Not desiring to be seen by Fox, I ordered my dinner sent to my room, as did the unhappy couple in the adjoining apartment, who seemed to be greatly put out by the intrusion, and who were for an hour after speculating as to the cause of the interruption, and as to whether it was accidental or not.
"We mustn't come here any more, Le Compte," said the woman dolefully.