The old professor apologized blandly for his intrusion, but seemed in no hurry to make the obvious reparation. He drew a match along the bottom of the mantle-shelf, eyeing the back of the little Doctor's head as he did so, and slowly lit a cigar. "I'm sorry to see that you've met with an accident, Mr. Queed. Is there anything, perhaps, that I might do?" "Nothing at all, thanks," said Queed, so indignantly that Nicolovius dropped the subject at once. The star-boarder of Mrs. Paynter's might have been fifty-five or he might have been seventy, and his clothes had long been the secret envy of Mr. Bylash. He leaned against the mantel at his ease, blowing blue smoke. "You find this a fairly pleasant place to sit of an evening, I daresay!" he purred, presently. The back of the young man's head was uncompromisingly stern. "I might as well try to write in the middle of Centre Street." "So?" said Nicolovius, not catching his drift. "I should have thought that--" "The interruptions," said Queed, "are constant." The old professor laughed. "Upon my word, I don't blame you for saying that. The gross communism of a boarding-house ... it does gall one at times! So far as I am concerned, I relieve you of it at once. Good-night." The afternoon before Nicolovius had happened to walk part of the way downtown with Mr. Queed, and had been favored with a fair amount of his stately conversation. He shut the door now somewhat puzzled by the young man's marked curtness; but then Nicolovius knew nothing about the turpentine. The broken evening wore on, with progress slower than the laborer's in Problem 71, when he decided to build two rods less a day. At eleven, Miss Miller, who had been to the theatre, breezed in; she wanted a drink of water. At 11.45--Queed's open watch kept accurate tally--there came Trainer Klinker, who, having sought his pupil vainly in the Scriptorium, retraced his steps to rout him out below. At sight of the tall bottle in Klinker's hand Queed shrank, fearing that Fifi had sent him with a second dose of turpentine. But the bottle turned out to contain merely a rare unguent just obtained by Klinker from his friend Smithy, the physical instructor at the Y.M.C.A., and deemed surprisingly effective for the development of the academic bicep.