"I have thought it over, Mr. Smart," she went on in a business-like manner, "and I believe we will get along much better together if we stay apart." Ambiguous remarks ordinarily reach my intelligence, but I was so stunned by preceding admissions that I could only gasp: "Do you mean to say you've been subsisting all this time on _my_ food?" "Oh, dear me, no! How can you think that of me? Gretel merely cooks the food I buy. She keeps a distinct and separate account of everything, poor thing. I am sure you will not find anything wrong with your bills, Mr. Smart. But did you hear what I said a moment ago?" "I'm not quite sure that I did." "I prefer to let matters stand just as they are. Why should we discommode each other? We are perfectly satisfied as we--" "I will not have my new cook giving notice, madam. You surely can't expect her--or him--to prepare meals for two separate--" "I hadn't thought of that," she interrupted ruefully. "Perhaps if I were to pay her--or him--extra wages it would be all right," she added, quickly. "We do not require much, you know." I laughed rather shortly,--meanly, I fear. "This is most extraordinary, madam!" "I--I quite agree with you. I'm awfully sorry it had to turn out as it has. Who would have dreamed of your buying the place and coming here to upset everything?" I resolved to be firm with her. She seemed to be taking too much for granted. "Much as I regret it, madam, I am compelled to ask you to evacuate--to get out, in fact. This sort of thing can't go on." She was silent for so long that I experienced a slow growth of compunction. Just as I was on the point of slightly receding from my position, she gave me another shock. "Don't you think it would be awfully convenient if you had a telephone put in, Mr. Smart?" she said. "It is such a nuisance to send Max or Rudolph over to town every whip-stitch on errands when a telephone--in your name, of course--would be so much more satisfactory." "A telephone!" I gasped. "Circumstances make it quite unwise for me to have a telephone in my own name, but you could have one in yours without creating the least suspicion. You are--" "Madam," I cried, and got no farther. "--perfectly free to have a telephone if you want one," she continued. "The doctor came this evening and it really wasn't necessary. Don't you see you could have telephoned for me and saved him the trip?" It was due to the most stupendous exertion of self-restraint on my part that I said: "Well, I'll be--jiggered," instead of something a little less unique. Her audacity staggered me. (I was not prepared at that time to speak of it as superciliousness.) "Madam," I exploded, "will you be good enough to listen to me? I am not to be trifled with. To-morrow sometime I shall enter the east wing of this building if I have to knock down all the doors on the place. Do you understand, madam?"