“'Silly boys!' said Gloria, with that delicious, soft Swedish accent which I can't even try to imitate. 'You are hot-blooded enough as it is. You don't need all that warming up. Look at us vegetarians; you make fun of us, but our lentils keep our blood circulating. Try Brussels sprouts; they are full of calories.' “'Ah!' we shouted. 'But you seem to keep this place warm enough.' “Old Larsen, who passed through the room just then, broke in crossly: “'We have to, for the sake of the customers,' he said. 'Gloria, stop fooling with the gentlemen and attend to business.' He seemed in a bad humour that night. “The next day must have been some sort of holiday, for I know we all went out to see a football game. We got back about supper-time and found the house perishing chill. With shouts and protests we called Mrs. Vesey from her kitchen, but she explained that the expected furnace man had not turned up. “'Well,' said Blackmore, 'this can't go on any longer, Mrs. Vesey. I'll go down and light the fire myself. We'll take turns and keep it going till your man comes.' “He ran down to the basement, but a minute later he was up again. “'Mrs. Vesey,' he shouted, 'what is all this nonsense? Are you kidding us? There's no coal down there at all!' “'No coal?' she exclaimed. 'Why, there was a good three or four tons, and the man said he put five tons more in yesterday. I heard him do it--never heard such a noise in my life. I paid him ten dollars a ton. “'Impossible!' Blackmore cried, angrily. 'There's not enough down there to fry Nemo with. About three shovelfuls, that's all. What is this--some kind of a game to freeze us out?' “Mrs. Vesey wrung her hands, and we all ran down to the cellar. It was as Blackmore had said. The bins were empty, save for a few lumps.” Dove gazed down thoughtfully at the coal office on the pier below us, where a wagon was loading. “On a mellow afternoon like this,” he said, “coal doesn't seem quite so pressing a concern; but I tell you, in a bleak boarding-house about Thanksgiving time, with no heat of any sort available but a gas-jet, it is a different matter. We were an angry and puzzled lot that night. Mrs. Vesey protested so pitifully that there had been coal in the bins only the day before, and asserted so repeatedly that she had heard the noise of the new load going in, that we could not help believe her. She promised to call up her coal man the first thing the next morning, and we also agreed to go round and visit him in a body, to add our personal appeals; but how on earth several tons of coal could have been stolen out of the cellar without any one hearing it seemed to us a mystery.