"He seems attractive," said his mother, less sweepingly, "and has excellent manners. He is good-looking, is he not?"
"Very." Jonathan winced. "He is just what a man would like to be.
And I never had a friendship that meant quite so much to me."
"Has he displaced Miss Summers?"
"Miss Summers," said Jonathan, "is—different. What shall I read to-night—Earnest Maltravers?"
Boarding-houses that are both good and cheap are not easy to find. David took his problem to Esther Summers. It made an excuse for a minute's chat. He liked to watch the dancing lights in those expressive gray eyes.
"Do you happen to know of any pretty good boarding-house? I say pretty good, because it has to be pretty cheap, too. The place I'm at now is a nightmare. They're always frying onions. And the star-boarder is a haberdashery clerk. He looks like an advertisement of ready-made clothes and talks out of the side of his mouth in what he thinks is an English accent. He's always talking to me about the squabs on his staff."
"What is a squab?" she asked.
"I'm not quite sure, but I think it's a wholly imaginary creature much taken by the charms of haberdashery clerks."
"I see. I don't think of any place now. Unless—" She hesitated doubtfully.
"Unless what?"