"But you spoiled it all by being so unnecessarily agreeable! It is my business, as your friend and well-wisher, to see that he doesn't carry away too jolly a memory of his visit. Take lunch downtown with me to-morrow, won't you, Mr. Queed—at the Business Men's Club? I want to finish our talk about the Catholic nations, and why they're decadent."
Queed said that he would, and Byrd hurried away to overtake Mr. Miller. Or, perhaps that gentleman was only a pretext, and the young man's experienced eye had read that any attempt to outsit the learned assistant editor was foredoomed to failure.
"I'm so glad you stayed," said Sharlee, as Queed reseated himself. "I shouldn't have liked not to exchange a word with you on your first visit here."
"Oh! This is not my first visit, you may remember."
"Your first voluntary visit, perhaps I should have said."
He let his eyes run over the room, and she could see that he was thinking, half-unconsciously, of the last time when he and she had sat here.
"I had no idea of going," he said absently, "till I had the opportunity of speaking to you."
A brief silence followed, which clearly did not embarrass him, at any rate. Sharlee, feeling the necessity of breaking it, still puzzling herself with speculations as to what had put it into his head to come, said at random:—
"Oh, do tell me—how is old Père Goriot?"
"Père Goriot? I never heard of him."