"I'm going to fire him!"
West laughed merrily. His face always looked most charming when he smiled. "Upon my word I believe you can do it."
"I have done it, lots of times."
"Ah! And is the ceremony ever attended by scenes of storm and violence?"
"Never. They march like little lambs when I say the word. Hay-foot—straw-foot!"
"But then your aunt loses their arrears of board, I suppose."
"Yes, and for that reason I never fire except as a last desperate resort. Signs of penitence, earnest resolves to lead a better life, are always noted and carefully considered."
"If you should need help with this customer to-night—not that I think you will, oh no!—telephone me. I'm amazingly good at handling bright young men. This is your aunt's, isn't it?"
"No, no—next to the corner over there. O heavens! Look—look!"
West looked. Up the front steps of Miss Weyland's Aunt Jennie's a man was going, a smallish man in a suit of dusty clothes, who limped as he walked. The electric light at the corner illumined him perfectly—glinted upon the spectacles, touched up the stout volume in the coat-pocket, beat full upon the swaybacked derby, whereon its owner had sat what time Charlotte Lee Weyland apologized for the gaucherie of Behemoth. And as they watched, this man pushed open Aunt Jennie's front door, with never so much as a glance at the door-bell, and stepped as of right inside.