Lucas stared at the tight-lipped, elderly face, like the face of a wise and distrustful gnome, and held the pen uncertainly above the cheque form.
"How much am I to write?" he asked.
"I haf no instrugtions about de amount," was the reply.
"But," cried Lucas, "I might write fifty thousand dollars!"
"My instrugtions are to cash de cheque ven you haf written it."
"Oh!" said Lucas.
He stared incredulously at the face for some moments and then wrote a cheque for the sum he had named—fifty thousand dollars. He was about to add his signature when something occurred to him.
"Is it because I went across the road to that little woman in
Tambov?" he asked suddenly.
The whiskered face answered composedly: "No. It is because you went out of your rooms and slept on de stairs."
"Because"—he seemed puzzled—"but that is a thing—why, any gentleman would do it."