"I am told--ahem!--that your friend has recently received a most flattering offer--from elsewhere?" How had he known this? "Well?" "Well, the party in question," said he, with his set smile, "seems to have a certain prejudice against me. She refuses to speak to me, in fact,--why, I cannot imagine. All the same, I am, and always have been, her sincere well-wisher. And after earnest thought, I honestly feel sure that her friends would make no mistake if they urged her not to let slip this--ahem--well-deserved promotion. I thought," he added, his gaze a threat now, "I'd better bring the point to your attention." Charles's fixed eyes did not waver. But before them there unrolled a thin gray mist, briefly shutting the principal from his sight. The mist queerly turned red, and became shot with fiery sparks. Then all cleared; and, behind him, the young man's hand felt for, and touched, the open door. Gently, moving only his arm, he shut it. And it seemed to him that he must be turning white inside. "You," said he, "are more used to insulting women than I am." Mysinger flung up a deprecating hand. "Tut, tut, my dear sir! Talk of that sort does no good whatever, I assure you. You would do well to look at the matter in a sensible way, and believe that I speak--_Here! What're you doing there?_" The principal had suddenly heard a strange sound: the click of his own key in his own lock, in fine. At the same time, his visitor was observed to be regarding him with a new and peculiar intentness, arresting and significant. And his only reply to his host's indignant inquiry was to drop the key in question in his coat-pocket. Now Mary's old conqueror, and his own, had straightened from that lounging swagger. His voice rang more angrily: "You--! What do you think you're up to, anyway--?" "I think I'm going to beat you to a pulp," said the author,--"_you puppy_!" And he started forward with a kind of bound, like one who goes to fill, at last, a long-felt need. XXIII Mary Wing was considered a reliable person. When she announced that she would clean out an office closet on a certain day, you could make your plans on the thing's being done. And to-day--if her usual principles might have weakened a little--Mary was further bound by the definite engagement she had made. As Charles had reflected, a demoted grammar-school teacher could not walk in and out of a principal's office like one who had some rights there.