Queed Part 16

"I'll help you--glad to do it--I need the drill myself. Gimme an hour a day for just a month, and I'll bet you the drinks you wouldn't quit after that for a hundred dollars."

Queed turned away from Klinker's honest eyes, and wrestled the bitter thing out. _Thirty Hours stolen from His Book!..._ Yesterday, even an hour ago, he would not have considered such an outrage for a moment. But now, driving him irresistibly toward the terrible idea, working upon him far more powerfully than his knowledge of headache, even than Klinker's promise of a net gain in his working ability, was this new irrationally disturbing knowledge that he was a physical incompetent.... If he had begun systematic exercise ten years ago, probably he could thrash Mr.

Pat to-day.

Yet an hour a day is not pried out of a sacred schedule of work without pains and anguish, and it was with a grim face that the Doc turned back to William Klinker.

"Very well, Mr. Klinker, I will agree to make the experiment, tentatively--an hour a day for thirty days only."

"Right for you, Doc! You'll never be sorry--take it from me."

Klinker was a brisk, efficient young man. The old gang that had fitted out the gymnasium had drifted away, and the thought of going once more into regular training, with a pupil all his own, was breath to his nostrils. He a.s.sumed charge of the ceded hour with skilled sureness.

Rain or shine, the Doctor was to take half an hour's hard walking in the air every day, over and above the walk to the office. Every afternoon at six--at which hour the managerial duties at Stark's terminated--he was to report in the gym for half an hour's vigorous work on the apparatus.

This iron-clad regime was to go into effect on the morrow.

"I'll look at you stripped," said Klinker, eyeing his new pupil thoughtfully, "and see first what you need. Then I'll lay out a reg'lar course for you--exercises for all parts of the body. Got any trunks?"

Queed looked surprised. "I have one small one--a steamer trunk, as it is called."

Klinker explained what he meant, and the Doctor feared that his wardrobe contained no such article.

"Ne'mmind. I can fit you up with a pair. Left Hand Tom's they used to be, him that died of the scarlet fever Thanksgiving. And say, Doc!"

"Well?"

"Here's the first thing I'll teach you. Never mister your sparring-partner."

The Doc thought this out, laboriously, and presently said: "Very well, William."

"Call me Buck, the same as all the boys."

Klinker came toward him holding out an object made of red velveteen about the size of a pocket handkerchief.

"Put these where you can find them to-morrow. You can have 'em. Left Hand Tom's gone where he don't need 'em any more."

"What are they? What does one do with them?"

"They're your trunks. You wear 'em."

"Where? On--what portion, I mean?"

"They're like little pants," said Klinker.

The two men walked home together over the frozen streets. Queed was taciturn and depressed. He was annoyed by Klinker's presence and irritated by his conversation; he wanted nothing in the world so much as to be let alone. But honest Buck Klinker remained unresponsive to his mood. All the way to Mrs. Paynter's he told his new pupil grisly stories of men he had known who had thought that they could work all day and all night, and never take any exercise. Buck kindly offered to show the Doc their graves.

VIII

_Formal Invitation to Fifi to share Queed's Dining-Room (provided it is very cold upstairs); and First Outrage upon the Sacred Schedule of Hours._

Queed supped in an impenetrable silence. The swelling rednesses both above and below his left eye attracted the curious attention of the boarders, but he ignored their glances, and even Klinker forbore to address him. The meal done, he ascended to his sacred chamber, but not alas, to remain.

For a full week, the Scriptorium had been uninhabitable by night, the hands of authors growing too numb there to write. On this night, conditions were worse than ever; the usual valiant essay was defeated with more than the usual case. Queed fared back to his dining-room, as was now becoming his melancholy habit. And to-night the necessity was exceptionally trying, for he found that the intrusive daughter of the landlady had yet once again spread her mathematics there before him.

Nor could Fifi this time claim misunderstanding and accident. She fully expected the coming of Mr. Queed, and had been nervously awaiting it.

The state of mind thus induced was not in the least favorable to doing algebra successfully or pleasurably. No amount of bodily comfort could compensate Fifi for having to have it. But her mother had ruled the situation to-night with a strong hand and a flat foot. The bedroom was _entirely too cold_ for Fifi. She must, positively _must_, go down to the warm and comfortable dining-room,--do you hear me, Fifi? As for Mr.

Queed--well, if he made himself objectionable, Sharlee would simply have to give him another good talking to.

Yet Fifi involuntarily cowered as she looked up and murmured: "Oh--good evening!"

Mr. Queed bowed. In the way of conveying displeasure, he had in all probability the most expressive face in America.

He pa.s.sed around to his regular place, disposed his books and papers, and placed his _Silence_ sign in a fairly conspicuous position. This followed his usual custom. Yet his manner of making his arrangements to-night wanted something of his ordinary aggressive confidence. In fact, his promise to give an hour a day to exercise lay on his heart like lead, and the lumps on his eye, large though they were, did not in the least represent the dimensions of the fall he had received at the hands of Mr. Pat.

Fifi was looking a little more fragile than when we saw her last, a little more thin-cheeked, a shade more ethereal-eyed. Her cough was quite bad to-night, and this increased her nervousness. How could she _help_ from disturbing him with that dry tickling going on right along in her throat? It had been a trying day, when everything seemed to go wrong from the beginning. She had waked up feeling very listless and tired; had been late for school; had been kept in for Cicero. In the afternoon she had been going to a tea given to her cla.s.s at the school, but her mother said her cold was too bad for her to go, and besides she really felt too tired. She hadn't eaten any supper, and had been quite cross with her mother in their talk about the dining-room, which was the worst thing that had happened at all. And now at nine o'clock she wanted to go to bed, but her algebra would not, _would not_ come right, and life was horrible, and she was unfit to live it anyway, and she wished she was ...

"You are crying," stated a calm young voice across the table.

Brought up with a cool round turn, greatly mortified, Fifi thought that the best way to meet the emergency was just to say nothing.

"What is the matter?" demanded the professorial tones.

"Oh, nothing," she said, winking back the tears and trying to smile, apologetically--"just silly reasons. I--I've spent an hour and ten minutes on a problem here, and it won't come right. I'm--sorry I disturbed you."

There was a brief silence. Mr. Queed cleared his throat.

"You cannot solve your problem?"

"I haven't _yet_," she sniffed bravely, "but of course I will _soon_.

Oh, I understand it very well...."

She kept her eyes stoutly fixed upon her book, which indicated that not for worlds would she interrupt him further. Nevertheless she felt his large spectacles upon her. And presently he astonished her by saying, resignedly--doubtless he had decided that thus could the virginal calm be most surely and swiftly restored:--

"Bring me your book. I will solve your problem."

"Oh!" said Fifi, choking down a cough. And then, "Do you know all about algebra, too?"

It seemed that Mr. Queed in his younger days had once made quite a specialty of mathematics, both lower, like Fifi's, and also far higher.

The child's polite demurs were firmly overridden. Soon she was established in a chair at his side, the book open on the table between them.

"Indicate the problem," said Mr. Queed.

Fifi indicated it: No. 71 of the collection of stickers known as Miscellaneous Review. It read as follows:

71. A laborer having built 105 rods of stone fence, found that if he had built 2 rods less a day he would have been 6 days longer in completing the job. How many rods a day did he build?

Queed read this through once and announced: "He built seven rods a day."