"Nothing, thank you," she replied. Then: "Good night, Mr. Smart. You are very good."
"Don't forget to-morrow—"
But the oblong aperture disappeared with a sharp click, and I found myself staring at the blank, sphynx-like wall.
Taking up my pad, my pipe and my pencil, and leaving all of my cherished ideas out there in the cruel darkness, never to be recovered,—at least not in their original form,—I scrambled through the window, painfully scraping my knee in passing,—just in time to escape the deluge.
I am sure I should have enjoyed a terrific drenching if she had chosen to subject me to it.
CHAPTER IV — I BECOME AN ANCESTOR
True to the promise she had extracted from me, I laid off my workmen the next morning. They trooped in bright and early, considerably augmented by fresh recruits who came to share the benefits of my innocuous prodigality, and if I live to be a thousand I shall never again experience such a noisome half hour as the one I spent in listening to their indignant protests against my tyrannical oppression of the poor and needy. In the end, I agreed to pay them, one and all, for a full day's work, and they went away mollified, calling me a true gentleman to my face and heaven knows what to my back.
I spoke gently to them of the sick baby. With one voice they all shouted: