"No. It is not time yet."
"Cicero's so horrid to-night."
"Don't scatter your difficulties, as I've told you before. Gather them
all together and have them ready to present to me at the proper time. I
shall make the usual pause," said Mr. Queed, "at nine sharp."
Fifi, after all, had been selfish enough to take the little Doctor at
his word. He had both given her the freedom of his dining-room and
ordered her to bring her difficulties to him, instead of sitting there
and noisily crying over them. And she had done his bidding, night after
night. For his part he had stuck manfully by his moment of reckless
generosity, no matter how much he may have regretted it. He helped Fifi,
upon her request, without spoken protest or censure. But he insisted on
doing it after an iron-clad schedule: Absolute silence until nine
o'clock; then an interlude for the solving of difficulties; absolute
silence after that; then at 9.45 a second interlude for the solving of
the last difficulties of the night. The old rule of the dining-room, the
_Silence_ sign, had been necessarily suspended, but the young man
enforced his schedule of hours far more strictly than the average
railroad.
"Nine o'clock," he announced presently. "Bring me your difficulties."
Fifi's brain was at low ebb to-night. She came around with several
books, and he jabbed his pencil at her open Cicero with some contempt.
"You have a fundamental lack of acquaintance with Latin grammar,
Miss--Miss Fifi. You badly need--"
"Why don't you call me Fifi, Mr. Queed? That's what all my friends call
me."
He stared at her startled; she thought his eyes looked almost terrified.
"My dear young lady! _I'm_ not your friend."
A rare color sprang into Fifi's pallid cheeks: "I--I thought you liked
me--from your being so good about helping me with my lessons--and
everything."
Queed cleared his throat. "I do like you--in a way. Yes--in that way--I
like you very well. I will call you F--Fifi, if you wish. But--friends!
Oh, no! They take up more time than such a man as I can afford."
"I don't think I would take up one bit more time as your friend than I
do now," said Fifi, in a plaintive voice.
Queed, uncomfortably aware of the flying minutes, felt like saying that
that was impossible.
"Oh, I know what I'm talking about, I assure you," said the possessor of
two friends in New York. "I have threshed the whole question out in a
practical way."
"Suppose," said Fifi, "your book came out and you were very famous, but
all alone in the world, without a friend. And you died and there was not
one single person to cry and miss you--would you think that was a--a
successful life?"
"Oh, I suppose so! Yes, yes!"
"But don't--don't you want to have people like you and be your friend?"
"My dear young lady, it is not a question of what I want. I was not put
here in the world to frivol through a life of gross pleasure. I have
serious work to do in the service of humankind, and I can do it only by
rigid concentration and ruthless elimination of the unessential. Surely
you can grasp that?"
"But--if you died to-morrow," said Fifi, fearfully fascinated by this
aspect of the young man's majestic isolation,--"don't you know of
anybody who'd be really and truly sorry?"
"Really, I've never thought of it, but doubtless my two friends in New
York would be sorry after their fashion. They, I believe, are all."
"No they aren't! There's somebody else!"
Queed supposed she was going to say God, but he dutifully inquired,
"Who?"
Fifi looked decidedly disappointed. "I thought you knew," she said,
gazing at him with childlike directness. "Me."
Queed's eyes fell. There was a brief silence. The young man became aware
of a curious sensation in his chest which he did not understand in the
least, but which he was not prepared to describe as objectionable. To
pass over it, and to bring the conversation to an immediate close, he
rapped the open book austerely with his pencil.
"We must proceed with the difficulties. Let me hear you try the passage.
Come! _Quam ob rem, Quirites_...."
The nine o'clock difficulties proceeded with, and duly cleared up, Fifi
did not stay for the second, or 9.45, interlude. She closed _M.T.
Ciceronis Orationes Selectæ_, gathered together her other paraphernalia,
and then she said suddenly:--
"I may leave school next week, Mr. Queed. I--don't think I'm going to
graduate."
He looked up, surprised and displeased. "Why on earth do you think
that?"
"Well, you see, they don't think I'm strong enough to keep up the work
right now. The Doctor was here to-day, and that's what he says. It's
silly, I think--I know I am."
Queed was playing the devil's tattoo with his pencil, scowling somewhat
nervously. "Did you want to graduate particularly?"
A look of exquisite wistfulness swept the child's face, and was gone.
"Yes, I wanted to--lots. But I won't mind so much after I've had time
to get used to it. You know the way people are."
There was a silence, during which the young man wrestled with the sudden
mad idea of offering to help Fifi with all her lessons each night--not
merely with the difficulties--thus enabling her to keep up with her
class with a minimum of work. Where such an impulse came from he could
not conjecture. He put it down with a stern hand. Personally, he felt,
he might be almost willing to make this splendid display of altruism;
but for the sake of posterity and the common good, he could not dream of
stealing so much time from the Magnum Opus.
"Well!" he said rather testily. "That is too bad."
"I know you'll be glad not to have me bothering you any more with my
lessons, and all."
"I will not say that."
He looked at Fifi closely, examined her face in a searching, personal
manner, which he had probably never before employed in reviewing a human
countenance.
"You don't look well--no, not in the least. You are not well. You are a
sick girl, and you ought to be in bed at this moment."