Pause; then the clerk, patiently: "Do you mind giving me your name, sir, so that I may fill in your ticket?" "I'd r'ally rather not; but seein' as it's you and you make a point of it--Iff." Pause.... "Beg pardon?" "Iff." "If what, sir?" "I-double-F, Iff: a name, not a joke. I-F-F--William Howard Iff. W. H. Iff, Whiff: joke." "Ow-w?" "But you needn't laugh." With dignity: "I was not intending to laugh, sir." Staff could hardly refrain from refreshing himself with a glance at the individual so singularly labelled. Appraising him covertly, he saw a man whose stature was quite as much shorter than the normal as his own was longer, but hardly less thin. Indeed, Staff was in the habit of defining his own style of architecture as Gothic, and with reasonable excuse; but reviewing the physical geography of Mr. Iff, the word _emaciation_ bobbed to the surface of the literary mentality: Iff was really astonishingly slight of build. Otherwise he was rather round-shouldered; his head was small, bird-like, thinly thatched with hair of a faded tow colour; his face was sensitively tinted with the faintest of flushes beneath a skin of natural pallor, and wore an expression curiously naive and yet shrewd--an effect manufactured by setting the eyes of a child, round and dimly blue, in a mask of weathered maturity. Now while Staff was receiving this impression, Mr. Iff looked sharply round; their glances crossed. Primarily embarrassed to be caught rudely staring, Staff was next and thoroughly shocked to detect a distinct if momentary eclipse of one of Mr. Iff's pale blue eyes. Bluntly, openly, deliberately, Mr. Iff winked at Mr. Staff, and then, having accomplished his amazement and discomfiture, returned promptly, twinkling, to the baiting of his clerk. "Your age, sir?" Mr. Iff enquired in simple surprise: "Do you really care to know?" "It's required, sir, by the--" "Oh, well--if I must! But, mind you, strictly as man to man: you may write me down a freeborn American citizen, entitled to vote and more 'n half white." "_Beg_ pardon?" "I say, I am an adult--" "Oh!" The clerk wrote; then, bored, resumed: "Married or single, please?" "I'm a spinster--" "O-w?" "Honestly--neither married nor unmarried." "Then-Q"--resignedly. "Your business--?" But here Staff's clerk touched the exasperated catechist on the shoulder and said something inaudible. The response, while equally inaudible, seemed to convey a sense of profound personal shock. Staff was conscious that Mr. Iff's clerk glanced reproachfully in his direction, as if to suggest that he wouldn't have believed it of him. Divining that he and Mr. Iff were bargaining for the same accommodations, Staff endeavoured to assume an attitude of distinguished obliviousness to the entire proceeding; and would have succeeded but for the immediate and impatient action of Mr. Iff.