He coughed; Mr. Pynsent coughed.
“I thought you had gone to Philadelphia,” said Sam.
“Indeed?” said Mr. Pynsent.
He made no further remark, but proceeded sedately to his room, from which he emerged again a moment later with a patient look of inquiry on his face.
“Come here, Sam,” he said. “Who,” he asked, pointing, “is this?”
Sam peeped through the doorway and perceived, tilted back in a swivel chair, a long, lean man of repellent aspect. His large feet rested comfortably on the desk, his head hung sideways and his mouth was open. From his mouth, which was of generous proportions, there came a gurgling snore.
“Who,” repeated Mr. Pynsent, “is this gentleman?”
Sam could not help admiring his uncle’s unerring instinct—that amazing intuition which had led him straight to the realisation that if an uninvited stranger was slumbering in his pet chair, the responsibility must of necessity be his nephew Samuel’s.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t know he was there.”
“A friend of yours?”